


faintest sunlights flee (about her shadowy sides)

by AlexiaBlackbriar13



Series: lexi's quarantine and chill fics [9]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Angst, Anxiety, Cthulhu Mythos, F/M, First Dates, First Kiss, Fluff, Horror, Human Oliver Queen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Past Suicidal Ideation, Leviathan Felicity Smoak, Mystery, Mythology References, Original Team Arrow, Quarantine and Chill Fic Drive (Arrow TV 2012), References to Depression, References to Drugs and Addiction, Sea Monsters, Season/Series 01, Venomous Creatures, kneecaps - Freeform, supernatural powers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-05-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:55:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 35,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24152416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlexiaBlackbriar13/pseuds/AlexiaBlackbriar13
Summary: From the moment Oliver first walks into Felicity's office, he knows that she's not human. His body's instinct is to be terrified of her. Despite his fear, he finds himself inexplicably drawn to her.Pulling her into the fray, Oliver must now attempt to solve the mystery of who and what Felicity is while saving the city, with the Undertaking looming on the horizon.
Relationships: Oliver Queen/Felicity Smoak
Series: lexi's quarantine and chill fics [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1672939
Comments: 226
Kudos: 310
Collections: Quarantine and Chill Fic Drive 2020





	1. part 1

**Author's Note:**

> here we go guys - my new 3 part multichapter. this fic is already completely pre-written and completed, just fyi
> 
> this fic is dedicated to bev (@felicityollies) who is, in all honestly, one of my best friends in the fandom. she's an incredibly talented writer and a wonderful, kind person at heart. she has always been very supportive of me and my writing and i don't know where i would be today without her. so bev - thank you SO much for continuing to be such an amazing friend to me.
> 
> big thanks to abby (MagusLibera), cerys (@smoaksmile) and lettie and mandy as well for being so encouraging and cheerleading me with this fic in DMs and on the TL. and also thank you to @olida_magda for the fantastic gif poster!!!
> 
> for the mythology au prompt for Q&C fic drive
> 
>  **Trigger Warnings** : there are discussions and descriptions of non-human entities consuming both animals and humans in this fic. there also a mention of suicide.

The bag with the laptop wrecked by bullet holes weighs like a ton of bricks hanging from Oliver’s shoulder, as he delicately explains to his step-father that he would like to acquire some technical help to deal with something of a sensitive nature; he would like to know if anybody working at Queen Consolidated fits the bill. Oliver has, of course, done his research already - he knows who Walter is likely to recommend him to, if the employee files and glowing reports personally written by the CEO are anything to go by. Official channels are better this time rather than attempting stealth, though, as he does legitimately need aid from somebody he can trust. He doesn’t know his step-father very well, but he reckons Walter has good judgment.

“I know the perfect woman,” Walter replies. He plucks a post-it note from the pile to scribble down a floor and office number. “She’s highly skilled and qualified in both computer sciences and cybersecurity, and has dealt with some of our, er, more _discrete_ matters in the past.”

Oliver takes the post-it note when offered to him. Plastering on a polite smile, he inclines his head with a calm, “Thank you, Walter.” He turns to leave but halts when he hears Walter’s chair scrape against the floor, indicating he’s standing.

“Wait, Oliver -” When the archer turns with an enquiring eyebrow, he’s confused and slightly shocked to see that his step-father suddenly looks very, _very_ nervous, and is averting his eyes. Walter swallows before continuing steadily, “Miss Smoak is an incredibly pleasant and lovely woman. She’s an exemplary employee. But she…” He seems lost for words, unsure how to continue. When he finally finished his sentence, he once again sounds anxious, “Sometimes people feel… uncomfortable… around her, and do not treat her well.”

He blinks, and asks in bemusement, “Is there a reason for it?”

Now _Walter_ looks uneasy. “It’s no fault of her own. She - when you’re around her - this is difficult to properly explain. You will know what I mean when you meet her, just… be cautious, but please do not be rude. She has never expressed any despondency regarding people’s reactions to her, but I feel like it bothers her more than she lets on.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Oliver replies slowly.

He has to admit, he is bewildered at what his step-father could possibly mean by her mere existence making people agitated, and even a bit angry and offended on poor Felicity’s behalf. Oliver traipses down to the IT department and notes how it’s an open office plan; he begins to wonder why, then, Felicity has her own individual office separate from the rest of the staff. Do people really feel so uncomfortable around her that they feel the need to ostracise her? That’s awful. He can’t imagine how Felicity must feel about it, knowing her co-workers dislike working near her. She’s an IT girl - how scary and dangerous could she possibly be?

Then, Oliver steps into Felicity’s office. His eyes sweep the space in a casual check for weapons, exits, and possible hazards, before his gaze settles on the blonde sitting at her desk. Felicity is twirling a red pen between her fingers as she focuses on her computer screen.

Oliver freezes and feels every single muscle in his body tensing at once, his brain screaming at him _DANGER DANGER DANGER RUN RUN RUN_. Whiplashed by the immediate fight or flight response, he takes a stumbling step back, blood flooding with white-hot adrenalin that makes him start trembling. He’s disorientated and _terrified_ simultaneously. He suddenly understands why people are troubled by Felicity’s presence.

There is something _not right_ with her.

She appears to be an unassuming, five foot five blonde with glasses and a ponytail and bright pink lipstick, and yet… staring at her, Oliver’s stomach is clenching. Nausea rises within him and makes him want to choke as his breaths stutter. He looks at her, and for a fleeting split second, does not see an IT girl. He sees a giant, dark, monstrous beast with a gaping maw and claws that can cut through bone like butter. Shadows _bend_ around her, like a shroud draped over her shoulders, and Oliver doesn’t know why or how, but it’s almost like she is _warping_ reality with her existence.

He’s petrified. Honest to god, scared for his life. She is _not human_.

Oliver doesn’t know what she is, but she is definitely, absolutely, not human. Something, however, that is buried beneath his twisting gut, tells him that she is _safe_. Every single other instinct in him is shrieking for him to escape now before he gets hurt, but there is the tiniest portion that is reassuring him that Felicity is not going to harm him and it’s okay for him to approach. Oliver doesn’t though, because his feet feel like they’re stuck in quicksand and his heart is fluttering with fear.

In the end, he doesn’t have to. Felicity’s eyes flicker up from her screen. His lungs sting as he holds his breath and deprives them of oxygen. Felicity’s eyes are blue like ocean seafoam but there is something deep, ancient, and powerful behind them, like turbulent waves crashing into the cliffs and destroying everything in their path. She smiles. Oliver’s heart _stops_. Too many teeth, _too many teeth_ , his mind wails. But when he looks again, her smile is normal, just a tad too radiant for his liking.

“Hi,” she greets him in a chirpy voice. Oliver resists the urge to shiver. Her tones are smooth and silky like cream and honey, and it feels like a trick, like he’s a bee drawn towards the sweet nectar of a venus flytrap. “Oliver Queen, right? I’m Felicity Smoak. Walter called down to let me know you were coming. What can I help you with?”

Struggling to shove down his irrational - _is it irrational?_ \- terror, Oliver walks towards her with measured steps and is somehow able to stop his voice from shaking as he pulls out the bullet-ridden laptop and tells her that he spilled a latte on it. 

Felicity laughs. It’s a joyful noise but Oliver thinks he hears a second, much deeper echo of it ringing in his ears that makes him want to shrivel up and hide. “Your coffee shop must be in a bad neighborhood,” she teases him.

Oliver reckons that she knows a lot more about bad neighborhoods than he does, despite the years he spent as a walking weapon for ARGUS and the Bratva, because she probably came from one of the worst. He considers backing out and away from the office because Felicity’s full attention on him is making him squirm. But there really is nobody else in this department he thinks would keep their mouth shut about something like this. “Is there anything you can do?”

Her eyes twinkle. He partially flinches because he feels like a piece of prey she’s going to bat between her paws for fun. “Let’s see if I can help.”

* * *

With the IT girl’s help, the archer is able to take down Floyd Lawton. Wanting to thank her and also having an extreme lack of self-preservation, he texts her to ask if she would like to get coffee with him Friday evening.

Diggle and he are on the outs because the bodyguard has found out about his vigilante extracurriculars, which means that Oliver will be meeting her on his own. The thought should horrify him, but Felicity hasn’t hurt him so far. Beyond his body’s instinctual reaction to her, she’s given him no reason to believe she’s a threat. Felicity’s response is an enthusiastic yes, so Oliver waits for her to finish her shift in the QC lobby, as their chosen coffee shop is an easy two blocks walk away.

It soon comes to Oliver’s attention that he’s not the only one who can see there is something off about Felicity, which lends to Walter’s claim that she makes people ‘uncomfortable’. From QC’s lobby all the way to the coffee shop, people give the blonde a wide berth. Felicity exuberantly tells Oliver about a new program she’s coding at the moment as they walk side by side - Oliver wouldn’t usually be interested, but since it’s meant to track embezzlement, it has a potential to be useful in his crusade. She doesn’t seem to notice the civilians who do a fearful double-take when they see her, the expressions of fright on people’s faces as they cross the street just to avoid passing her. Or if she does notice, she doesn’t care.

 _What are you?_ Oliver is itching to ask her. _Why are people so afraid of you when they don’t even know who you are? What are you hiding? What have you done? Who are you really?_ If she’s not human, then is she really Felicity Smoak? He keeps his mouth closed, though. Interrogating her will not end well, he suspects. Contrary to popular opinion, Oliver does not have a death wish; he gets the most unsettling feeling around Felicity that they are all gnats in comparison to her, and - well, how easy would it be for her to swat a particularly irritating one?

He observes her quietly, smiling at her and pretending that everything is okay when it’s _not_. Felicity is able to walk backward a couple of times as she rambles to him without stumbling once, and her stride is lithe and purposeful, despite the clumsy act she tries to put on. She moves like a serpent on the hunt, a predator on the prowl knowing exactly how high up in the food chain she is. She knows that there’s no other creature that could take her down. Oliver silently thinks that his arrows would most likely be useless against her, especially since she’s not human.

When they get to the coffee shop, the barista tells them they can sit upstairs, which has been cordoned off for a private event later in the evening. It’s because the moment they entered, a lot of the customers hastily left. They can’t just flat-out ask Felicity to leave because there’s no _reason_ for it, she hasn’t done anything to harass or alarm people beyond existing, so they’re trying to separate her from the rest of the customers so they don’t lose business. Something about that saddens Oliver for a moment. Being shunned constantly cannot be fun for Felicity. He understands now why Walter said he was worried about her being hurt by it. She brushes it off with a bright grin but the way she wilts ever so slightly is telling.

The upside of sitting upstairs by themselves, however, is that they have privacy. The two of them continue to make small talk for a short while, asking about each other’s families and what they’ve been up to recently, all the things two friends would usually question about if they were catching up. Oliver wonders - does this mean they’re friends? They’re spending time with each other outside a work setting, which suggests so.

“I’m guessing you work out a lot?” Felicity asks, her teeth nipping the tip of her caramel frappucino’s paper straw.

“Yes, I like to stay in shape,” he replies with a shrug. He adds, after a beat, in a more morose voice, “Being fit was important on the island.”

Felicity hasn’t asked him anything about Lian Yu yet, which is a surprise, because _everybody_ has asked him about it so far. She gives him a toothy smile - _TOO MANY TEETH_ \- and jokes, “Can’t imagine there were any treadmills or cross trainers there.”

He snorts, in genuine amusement. “No. What about you? You’re pretty in shape.” He hasn’t exactly been _looking_ looking, but it’s clear to see that Felicity’s muscles are nicely toned and even though she’s small, she’s athletic.

The seafoam in her eyes darkens and deepens into a tempest. Oliver’s blood runs cold. Felicity’s smile, which before was laidback and open, has transformed into a mischievous smirk. “I do a lot of swimming,” she responds in a purr.

She doesn’t mean in a pool, Oliver thinks. He gulps down the lump forming in his throat.

_WHAT IS SHE?_

“Are we not going to talk about it, then?” Felicity asks, cocking her head.

Oliver’s heart skips a beat. Is she - is she asking if they’re going to discuss her? Or something else? “Talk about what?”

She quirks an eyebrow. “The fact you’re the vigilante.”

Of course, she knows. Of course. He sighs, resigned. “Is it that obvious?”

“Only to me,” Felicity replies, looking delighted that he’s not going to try and lie to her. “I have a keener eye than most and an astute ability to detect deception.” She can tell when people are lying to her… probably because she’s lying about her very being. “Now you know that I know, can I please come to your secret hide-out?”

Oliver hesitates. “I don’t know if you should be getting involved with me, Felicity,” he says carefully. “The sort of life that I live, it’s dangerous. By associating with me, you could get hurt.”

“I can protect myself.” Her shadow, for a few seconds, stretches and bulges on the floor, the air rippling around her like an intense heatwave. The archer clenches his jaw and refuses to break eye contact with her, determined not to show his fear.

He believes her.

* * *

Felicity joins their small team, and her first evening in the Foundry is a rather uneventful one, until Diggle shows up. The bodyguard has never met her before, only hearing about her through Oliver, and he laughed when the archer warned him that Felicity’s presence is alarming. Oliver has always suspected that Diggle’s reaction to Felicity will be a strong and visceral one, and has therefore dreaded them meeting, in all honesty.

He’s become a lot more comfortable around Felicity the more time he’s spent with her, which is why Oliver feels secure enough to sit next to her. Side by side, they sit at the blonde’s spitting new shiny monitor set-up, running an algorithm that is going to compile police reports, media articles, and other pilfered information on certain individuals from the List. It’s as Felicity is explaining how the collated data is going to be integrated into their new servers that Diggle arrives.

Oliver eyes him anxiously as he descends the staircase towards them. When the man reaches the very bottom, and his gaze comes to a stop on Felicity, he stills. For a solid half a minute, Diggle doesn’t even dare to breathe, his expression overcome with sheer terror. Then, without saying a single damn word, he shakes his head vehemently, whips around, and leaves.

Cursing under his breath, Oliver rests his hand on Felicity’s shoulder for a second to reassure her when she blinks at him with a sad pout. She’s been looking forward to meeting Diggle, and now the man has fled at the sight of her. He hurries after his bodyguard, hoping he’ll be able to calm the man down before he does something rash.

He finds Diggle leaning heavily against his family’s black sedan in the alleyway, looking dazed, shaking and panting as if he’s fighting off a panic attack. “What the hell is she?” he snaps at Oliver wildly, when the archer creeps toward him. It’s the most panicked he’s ever heard or seen his bodyguard. “That’s not - she’s not -”

“Not human, I know,” Oliver huffs. “I don’t know _what_ she is, but she’s… she’s not a danger to _us_ , Dig.”

Diggle shudders. “But she’s -”

“I know how you’re feeling,” he cuts him off sympathetically. Oliver will tolerate a lot of things but Felicity is his _friend_ and he will not stand to hear his bodyguard call her a monster, no matter what she’s hiding beneath her blonde human form. “When I first met her… I was terrified of her. She exhumes a dark kind of energy that makes you want to scratch your eyeballs out. But I promise, Dig, she’s actually really sweet when you get to know her. She’s always animated and cheerful. She’s _not_ evil.”

“How do you know she’s not tricking you?” Diggle questions.

Oliver lowers his gaze to the floor and shrugs helplessly. “I don’t. I just hope she isn’t. She hasn’t hurt me thus far. Please will you just give her a chance?”

Narrowing his eyes, the bodyguard accuses, “She’s important to you.”

“She’s my friend.”

Diggle’s brow furrows. “She… doesn’t seem like the sort of, er…” he flounders a second, “... _person_ , who would have many friends, if I’m right in assuming that most people react to her initially as I did.”

He nods. “Felicity seems to enjoy having company but nobody will give her the time or patience to grow comfortable around her.”

“And you did.” Diggle stares at him like he’s crazy. Maybe Oliver is, to have spent so much time with Felicity willingly, and enjoyed doing so. “Why?”

It takes a minute for Oliver to figure out how to answer. He exhales with a tremor and murmurs, “I would rather the two of us be a little less lonely together than actually alone.”

* * *

It takes a little over a month before Diggle trusts Felicity enough to remain in the same room as her without Oliver there as a buffer, but those four weeks are part of a precious probation period of the three of them working together. They pass with flying colors; Oliver gets arrested and then exonerated, they take down the Royal Flush gang and they even manage to get the entire Bertinelli family taken into the FBI’s custody, including one murderous Helena Bertinelli. They are now officially a team and have successfully dealt with seven criminal elitists from the List together.

At some point during this month as well, Oliver and Felicity become best friends. The novelty of the archer being a rescued castaway has worn off, and the fact that he’s so drastically matured no longer fits in with Tommy Merlyn’s lifestyle. He’s infatuated with Laurel, who hates Oliver and blames him for her sister’s death. Tommy and Laurel were, sadly, the only two people that he was genuinely close to before the shipwreck, so Oliver finds that Felicity and Diggle are now his only true friends - and he and Felicity, despite being like fire and ice, just click.

It doesn’t matter to him anymore that the hairs at the back of his neck tingle when she’s near. Suppressing his flinches whenever she touches him, her fingers unnaturally frigid, becomes second nature. He can make eye contact and _maintain_ it, without feeling nauseous and losing himself in the dark underwater trench that lies beneath the shimmering lagoon surface. Felicity is not human and is the most petrifying person he’s ever met, but he _trusts_ her. He feels _safe_ around her. Maybe it’s because he knows that Felicity, as secretly powerful as she is, can protect herself and him.

The two of them hang out at her apartment together to eat take-out and catch Oliver up on the pop culture he’s missed, go on coffee shop trips, and run in the local park together. It might be the best and healthiest relationship - that is, _friendship_ \- he’s ever had with somebody. Diggle occasionally joins them for coffee and spends time with them in the Foundry, so he’s been drawn into their huddle as well. He’s not as uneasy around Felicity anymore.

Not only are they learning how to function as a team and a friendship group - Oliver and Diggle are learning a lot more about Felicity personally. Some of what they learn is faintly disturbing and just reminds them all over again that the bubbly IT girl is not human, despite her appearance and how she is attempting to play as one.

First of all, her eyes glow in the dark. Not like an animal’s, though. Felicity’s eyes, seafoam blue as they are, glow a dark ominous green, like two luminescent pearls of malachite. She moves far too quickly at a superhuman speed when she is rushing across the Foundry, and is able to blend into the darkness by cloaking herself in shadows. Sometimes, she moves in such a way that should be against the laws of motion, lending evidence to the fact that Oliver thinks that she exists partially outside of their dimension and is unaffected by the limits of reality.

One time, Diggle comes up to Oliver, utterly and completely spooked, and hisses that when he was wrapping his hands ready for training, he saw the shadow of a _tentacle_ reach across the room to grab Felicity a milkshake from the minifridge.

Tentacles. Huh. That’s new, Oliver muses. He makes a mental note. He’s made a little bullet-point list in his journal of all of Felicity’s preternatural behaviors and quirks they’ve witnessed so far. It’s long. Three pages long. (It took a couple of weeks for him to decide whether or not an abnormal obsession with sushi should go on the list.)

Countless hours of research into eldritch horrors and cryptids and mythical creatures do not enlighten Oliver or Diggle to what Felicity _is_. She certainly won’t tell them. They reckon at this point that she knows that they know she isn’t human, but isn’t going to say anything until they ask her. And truthfully, the two of them consider Felicity their friend now and don’t want to pry into her personal life - if only due to the fact that they’re terrified she might eat them or something.

Sometimes Oliver can’t help but question their friendship. Surely if they are true friends, Felicity will eventually tell them the truth? He wonders whether or not she’s just hanging around with them for her own entertainment, whether or not she actually cares for them at all like he and Diggle have come to care for her, to the point where they worry for her, over what they might do if someday a government agency storms in and tries to kidnap Felicity to experiment on her. She’s not human… so does she even have emotions as humans do? Does she experience love and fondness in the same way that humans do - is that even possible for her? He might know, if she opened up to him, but Oliver is bitterly losing hope that will ever happen.

It’s early afternoon on a cold, windy day at the beginning of December, and the archer is toweling off after a twenty-minute salmon ladder work-out. He’s wondering whether Felicity might be bored at work currently, when Diggle arrives. He’s pale and wide-eyed with an expression of astonishment and horror.

“I have a contact in ARGUS,” he says shakily. “She’s a very close friend, trustworthy - somebody I knew would be able to do this off the books and below the radar. I asked her to look and see if ARGUS have any files on Felicity, because I started thinking that - the government must know she’s here. She gave me this.”

He throws down a file on the counter. Oliver feels the ripple across his face when he sees the cover, that states in bold font, _HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL, ‘FELICITY MEGAN SMOAK’, THREAT ASSESSMENT: ALPHA_. He knows how ARGUS’ threat assessment works. They grade potential assets and enemies using the first six Greek alphabet letters. Zeta, at the bottom, is a standard grade civilian. Oliver was Gamma level, a mentally unstable and barely controllable but highly skilled agent. For Felicity to be Alpha…

Pulling the file into his lap, he opens it with trembling fingers and begins to read. _Extremely dangerous. Undetermined power level. Undetermined abilities. Possible threat to humanity. Uncontrollable and uncontainable. No contingency. No known weaknesses. Do not make contact. Do not engage. Just pray she does not decide to attack. Apocalypse level fallout._

When Felicity appeared in Starling City in 2010 and was hired at QC, she popped up onto ARGUS’ radar and they sent in two undercover agents to observe her and perform their threat assessments. One of the agents suffered a nervous breakdown halfway through and moved permanently to the Maldives. The other shot himself in the head at the end of the assignment.

The report attempts to discuss what Felicity is, but even ARGUS isn’t sure. Kraken and Scylla are the most popular theories. Leviathan is written in capital letters and is circled several times.

The codename that ARGUS has given Felicity is Cthulhu.

It takes some Googling for Oliver to figure out why. Cthulhu is the fictional cosmic, titanic, all-powerful entity from H.P. Lovecraft’s books, who takes the form of a giant thunderous sea monster.

Oliver crawls into the corner of the Foundry and contemplates his existence.

* * *

The family of raccoons that’s started living behind Verdant, attacking the delivery drivers and Diggle as he takes the secret entrance into the Foundry, go missing one day. Oliver remembers Felicity complaining that they littered rotting trash over the ground outside and scratched up her Mini Cooper.

Felicity’s smug look the next evening makes him think she might have eaten them.

He decides that he is never going to piss Felicity off again, just in case she gets peckish in the Foundry one night and thinks his toes will make excellent snacks.

* * *

God knows what comes over Oliver, but he invites Felicity to spend Christmas with him and his family. Maybe it’s the idea of her being alone stuck in her tiny apartment while he and Diggle enjoy the holidays with their families that he can’t stand; Felicity really doesn’t do well when she’s alone anymore, he’s noticed, as she’s got used to him and Dig being around constantly. He regrets his decision to ask for a moment when utter shock washes over her face, but then the blonde is squealing and jumping into his arms to hug him. The shadows that surround her writhe and leap. He’s a little startled at how he can feel her inhumanly _vibrating_ in his embrace.

Felicity is absolutely ecstatic; she reminds Oliver that she’s Jewish, but the archer nods and informs her that he’s already told his family, and they’re happy to help her continue celebrating Hanukkah as well, if she wants, as they are already halfway through the holiday. His mother and sister were initially dubious when Oliver requested they adopt a guest over the season, obviously thinking some unsavory things of Felicity. They relaxed and agreed when Walter vouched for her, though, and after the archer reluctantly explained that Felicity is not only his best friend, but the one person he’s become comfortable with since arriving home. It’s rather ironic, really, that he feels so safe around her when everybody else is ready to drop a grenade and run.

Felicity moves into her guest room at the Queen mansion on December 15th, the second to last day of Hanukkah. Diggle drives her and Oliver up to the front porch and helps them get her small suitcase out of the trunk before hugging them both, wishing them the best and telling them he’ll see them on December 27th, which is when they’ve planned to have a Team Hood post-Christmas dinner. Until then, they’re all off duty.

Bouncing like an excited puppy, Felicity babbles energetically about baking them sufganiyot that evening, which are deep-fried jelly donuts - and the only food she can make without causing a kitchen fire, apparently. Oliver grins at her exuberance. It’s one of the first times he thinks he’s seen her so happy she’s _actually_ tripping over the steps, her supernatural agility failing her.

The joyous mood immediately falls flat, however, when they enter the house to be greeted by Oliver’s family. Walter, who has grown used to Felicity’s unusual presence, manages to crack and smile and shake her hand, although his arm twitches in protest as he does so. His mother and sister… Moira just takes a step back with an utterly _horrified_ , fearful expression, her eyes darting all over Felicity and undoubtedly catching sight of how the blonde’s shadows are misshapen. Thea covers her mouth with her hand, white as a sheet, and sprints up the stairs to hide in her room.

Felicity visibly cringes at their reactions. She’s hurt, and this might be the first time she’s properly shown it, revealing how sad people’s terror at the sight of her makes her. She offers a tremulous, shy smile and says quietly, “Hi, Mrs Queen. I’m Felicity, it’s nice to meet you… thank you for letting me join you in your wonderful home over the holidays, I really appreciate it.”

Moira doesn’t respond beyond uttering a scandalized, “What _are_ you?” 

Walter hisses, “Moira!” in admonishment, but the damage is already done.

Eyes dark to the point where they are almost black, two gleaming pools of onyx with flecks of nightingale blue and emerald, Felicity’s shadows curl and coil around her protectively. Her height hasn’t increased at all, but Oliver suddenly feels like she’s towering over them. The archer resists the urge to back away from her and keeps his shaking hand settled on the small of her back. Quotes from the ARGUS report run through his mind, and he wonders concernedly what exactly would have to occur to cause Felicity - _Leviathan, Scylla, Kraken, dragon of the sea_ \- to snap.

“Now unsure of whether I am welcome here or not,” Felicity answers his mother’s question, her voice scarily calm. “I can leave, if you would prefer.”

“Nonsense,” Walter cuts in, before Moira can say yes. “We’re delighted to have you, Felicity.”

Felicity stays, but does not spend much time in the company of Oliver’s mother and sister. Walter doesn’t really hang out with them either, as he’s busy with QC work. Oliver is concerned that Felicity will be offended, but she seems to prefer the two of them having one-on-one time instead, where they can just be themselves and not have to worry about formalities or boundaries which, at this point in their friendship, they don’t really have.

Raisa, who is taken back but patient with Felicity, helps her bake sufganiyot. Oliver sits with her as she lights her menorah and says her prayers, on the second to last and last night of Hanukkah. Felicity doesn’t outwardly come across as somebody who is religious, but Oliver has read some more lore on Leviathan lately and it turns out they stem from Judaism, so it makes sense Felicity is proud of her faith.

On December 20th, they hold a Christmas party with just close friends and family. The Queens used to hold grand parties but Thea informs him over hot cocoa one evening, while Felicity is upstairs showering, that they stopped that tradition the year the Gambit went down. Out of respect for that, Oliver has agreed that they only host a small number of people to celebrate with. A couple of QC executives who are friends with Moira and Walter attend, as well as some of Thea’s school mates. When Tommy and Laurel arrive, Oliver is thrown for a loop. Felicity whispers into her ear that she heard Moira calling and inviting them the previous day, concerned that her son was spending too much time with one ‘disturbing’ individual - which the blonde tries to reassure him is not the worst thing she has been called.

As the party starts, Felicity is, once again, spurned and ostracised. She’s chosen to wear a stunning red dress with her hair done up beautifully in a neat bun, exposing her toned shoulders, and Oliver thinks she looks wonderful, but nobody except Walter offers her compliment. Diggle is here too - it’s a surprise that he’s come, but a good one; he’s the only one who talks with her, and after a piercing look from Oliver, remains at her side throughout the evening. Everybody else shoots the blonde one look - either frightened or disgusted or bewildered - and stays clear of her. Angered by their rudeness, and especially Tommy and Laurel’s, he gently takes Felicity by the elbow and leads her over to them, to make introductions.

When Tommy catches sight of the blonde on Oliver’s arm, he drops his champagne glass. And not in a good way. Laurel steps behind him to use him as a human shield, looking as if she’s about to pass out.

“Tommy, Laurel,” Oliver greets them. “So glad you could make it. Merry Christmas.”

They echo it back to him absentmindedly, eyes fixed warily on Felicity, who is brushing crumbs from a mini quiche off her dress.

“I don’t think you’ve met Felicity,” the archer continues. “She’s my best friend.”

Tommy stares at him. “But… I’m your best friend.”

“I didn’t know it wasn’t possible for somebody to have more than one best friend,” Felicity mutters under her breath.

“Tommy, you haven’t responded to my non-business related texts in three months and we haven’t seen each other for two, beyond what meetings were needed to help set up Verdant,” Oliver replies. “It’s okay, I’m not upset. I’m a very different person now after getting back from the island, and sometimes friends just drift apart.”

Tommy looks shocked.

“So how did the two of you meet?” Laurel questions, swallowing nervously.

Felicity launches into the story in an animated fashion. Oliver can tell that Tommy and Laurel are only paying attention to her enthusiastic hand gestures rather than her actual words, as if they’re concerned she’s going to strike out at them. Once again, he finds himself tensing with fury. People are so _rude_ to Felicity, just because she’s different. In the end, Felicity abandons the story with a disappointed smile when Laurel loudly interrupts claiming she needs to go and speak to Moira about some CNRI fundraiser business. Oliver bristles and pulls the blonde in for a hug, even though she assures him that she’s fine. Everybody eyes them with disdain and the archer stares back at them with challenging stubbornness, daring them to interrupt. They don’t.

The evening is pretty much ruined from then on. Oliver, Felicity, and Diggle are forced to leave when the Dark Archer takes a group of civilians hostage and demands the Hood to come and fight him. Oliver insists on going alone, citing it’s too risky to bring either of them along. He can tell Felicity isn’t happy with this decision judging by the way her eyes flash and shadow jerks, but she doesn’t argue, instead ordering him to keep his comm unit in at all times. Diggle drops him off a block away from the site and wishes him luck.

It goes terribly. While Oliver is able to free and save the hostages, he is beaten within an inch of his life by the Dark Archer, who is stronger, faster and more prepared than he is. Oliver ends up with an arrow lodged in his left thigh and his right shoulder, the tip caught beneath his shoulder blade, and his right ankle and wrist are badly sprained. He isn’t sure how many ribs he’s broken. The pain is blinding and he’s barely able to gasp to a panicking Felicity that he needs help before he blacks out.

When Oliver stirs, he’s in hospital. For a brief second, he’s struck with anxiety and tries to sit up, despite the agony and weight on his chest. His agitation fades and he relaxes, however, when his blurry vision sharpens and he focuses in on Felicity’s face, which is hovering above his. Her small but cold hand is wrapped around his own. His stomach twists with the usual revulsion because even though he’s adjusted to being around her, he still can’t control that instinctual reaction, but it’s quickly overtaken by relief.

“Hey, hey, calm down,” she says soothingly, brushing his hair back from his brow tenderly. “It’s okay, you’re safe. You’re in Starling City General Hospital. You’ve been unconscious for about six hours. Diggle is downstairs in the cafeteria with your family.”

“What happened?” he croaks.

Felicity fetches some ice chips for his aching throat. “The Dark Archer did a number on you,” she explains. “You managed to call for help and - well, I backtraced the signal and miraculously got to you in time and transported you here for medical attention.”

“You? Not Diggle?”

“Diggle had to distract the cops that were swarming the area.”

Felicity helpfully drops a couple of ice chips on his tongue. The hospital room is freezing and the blanket covering him is incredibly thin, so Oliver quickly starts shivering. Out of nowhere, the blonde reveals and drapes another blanket over him. He frowns and glances over to the counter, where he’s certain he spotted said blanket a second ago, except Felicity didn’t go anywhere near it. Remembering how Diggle once said Felicity likes to reach across rooms to grab things with a _tentacle_ , Oliver decides to keep a closer eye on all her limbs.

“What’s the damage report?” he rasps, closing his eyes.

“You've got a pneumothorax, three broken ribs, and a concussion, but the doctor said you're going to be okay,” she cracks a weary smile. Oliver blinks at her with a slight frown. He didn’t notice it before, but Felicity looks _exhausted_. “If anybody asks, the story Dig and I have told is that the two of us were tired so left the party early to go to my apartment to get some peace and quiet, Diggle went home. You took your bike out to grab us late-night Big Belly Burger and a semi pulled right in front of you.” 

Oliver nods, memorizing the story, but is stuck on what she first said about his injuries. “What about the arrow wounds and my ankle and wrist? I mean - the moment the doctors saw the puncture wounds they must have called the police. Am I going to be arrested anytime soon?”

“What arrow wounds?” Felicity asks steadily. “What are you talking about? Your ankle and wrist are fine.”

He blinks at her. Does she think he’s stupid. “He shot me with two arrows. One in my shoulder, one in my -” Oliver pushes the blanket back to examine his leg. His mind goes blank. Apart from some bruises, there’s no wound there. “My - my ankle and wrist -” After examining those too, he determines that they are no longer sprained like they were earlier in the night. The archer falls quiet, astounded.

Felicity’s expression is impassive and her voice is far too calm as she tells him, “You hit your head pretty hard, Oliver, and you were in a lot of pain. You were probably just seeing things.”

But he wasn’t. Oliver _knows_ he wasn’t. Silent, he flicks his gaze cautiously up to meet Felicity’s. Dark with malachite chips instead of her normal seafoam blue. Felicity is more Leviathan than human tonight, but there’s also a heavy fatigue in her eyes and the hard set of her shoulders that suggests -

Did she _heal him?_ The wounds that have vanished are the ones that were both the most and least problematic - the arrow wounds that would alert the police, and the sprained limbs that would simply irritate him. The healing of the puncture wounds… yes, that can be put down to Felicity protecting the _team_ by protecting his secret identity, but the other injuries were so small with the potential to be highly annoying, and she knows that so… if she healed those, she did that for _him_. And just for him. To help him and ease a little of his pain. She does care about him.

His family burst in then, weepy and needing to be comforted. Diggle follows behind them at a more sedated pace and Oliver watches out of the corner of his eye as he slowly makes his way over to Felicity, who has melted back into the shadows in an attempt to make herself invisible to Moira and Thea. Diggle tentatively touches her shoulder and wraps a blanket around her, guiding her down into one of the visitor’s chairs.

Walter announces they are going to head home to let him get some rest, and then asks Felicity if she would like a lift back with them. Thea and Moira flinch when they realize she’s been hanging at the back of the room the entire time. Felicity tiredly declines but thanks him for the offer. Diggle gives her a hug and Oliver a delicate pat on the knee before he departs with the Queens to drive them back to the mansion.

“You should go and get some sleep yourself,” Oliver tells the blonde worriedly. “You look dead on your feet.”

“You almost were dead,” she replies. She does that trick again where he pulls something out of nowhere, and this time, it’s a gift wrapped in shiny green Christmas paper. “I meant to give this to you at the end of the party. I forgot to give it to you on the last night of Hanukkah and it’s not suitable as a Christmas present. Please get some rest, Oliver. I’ll be back tomorrow to visit you.”

Felicity leans forward and brushes a fond kiss against his forehead. Her lips are cold but something rushes through his body, not adrenalin but something else that lights his nerve endings on _fire_. He’s not scared and his body is not protesting her closeness, for once; in fact, he feels _alive_ , in a way he never has before. The heart monitor picks up his pulse rapidly increasing, and his heart doesn’t slow as she pulls away and trods toward the door.

Oliver tears the wrapping paper off his gift. It’s a new English copy of the Hebrew Bible. Five pages have been marked by thin strips of leather acting as bookmarks. Out of curiosity and dread, the archer flips to one of them.

_Isaiah 27:1 In that day, the Lord with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish Leviathan the piercing serpent, even Leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea._

He stops breathing. When his panicked gaze flies up to the doorway, Felicity is gone.

She definitely knows that he knows.

Despite all the drugs and the pain meds, Oliver doesn’t sleep that night.

* * *

Oliver’s stay in the hospital is miserable. He honestly hates it. The smell of disinfectant burns his nose, and the temperature of the room has been turned up at his request to the point where the heat is stifling. Being immobile and hooked up to so many drips and monitors makes him feel claustrophobic; feeling trapped and confined is not something he deals well with. His temper rises as he grows tired and irritated at his situation, and Oliver soon finds himself snapping at his mother and sister when they try to fuss over him.

Felicity is, candidly, the only reason he stays sane. When she’s hanging out with him, most of the doctors, nurses, and his other visitors don’t dare enter his room, which means that he’s finally able to take naps and have a conversation with somebody who isn’t scared he’s going to fracture. The blonde comes to see him every day after she finishes work, during her lunch breaks, and at the weekends. Diggle visits less frequently but always brings things to entertain Oliver - lately he’s been bringing him books, as the archer has been getting back into reading.

Diggle has a sick sense of humor, because the first two books he brings Oliver are _The Odyssey_ and _The Call of Cthulhu_.

Having read _The Odyssey_ before during college, and the book reminding him of direr times on the island, the archer turns his attention to the H.P. Lovecraft novel instead, intrigued to learn more about why ARGUS has given Felicity the nickname of Lovecraft’s slumbering sea god.

When Felicity walks in with a bouquet of sunflowers on Christmas morning, beaming like a ray of sunshine and her shadows wiggling happily, her expression shutters when she sees Oliver with the book in his hand.

“Why are you reading that?” she demands.

Oliver stares at her, wide-eyed and heart jackrabbiting in his chest. “Um -”

“Lovecraft was a sexist asshole,” Felicity bristles, snatching the book from his grasp and chucking it across the room into the _trash_. “Don’t read his garbage!” She continues to mutter disdainfully about how nobody respects documenting the details of real eldritch horrors anymore.

The rest of the day is much more cheerful, and Diggle brings them both leftovers from Christmas lunch with his parents. To Oliver and his alarm, Felicity is much more interested in the turkey carcass than the meat itself, picking at the bones, as tiny as they might be, with a pleased grin on her face. They exchange gifts - Diggle has bought Oliver some premium whiskey, and Felicity winks and says his present is down in the Foundry but shows him an order form for some custom titanium-tungsten alloy throwing knives. Felicity is delighted with the selection of red wine Oliver gifts her, and Diggle is impressed by a set of high-quality protective sports gloves to use instead of wraps when training with a dummy.

Moira, Walter, and Thea spend the afternoon with them, and at this point, the two women seem to have accepted - albeit reluctantly - that Felicity is a part of Oliver’s life now. Even Laurel and Tommy come to visit, although they don’t stay for long, only about half an hour. It’s certainly the best Christmas Oliver has had in five years, and Felicity is so gleeful and euphoric that he thinks this might be the best Christmas she’s had _ever_ , in god knows how many years. Decades. Centuries?

At the end of a wonderful day, Oliver is left alone but content in his private room, peering out through the windows at his city, which is shining with holiday joy. Wanting to do some light reading before retiring to bed, he traipses over to the trash can, which he knows is empty apart from his book.

He glances down into it, and sees a pile of ashes.

The archer laughs. Felicity must have incinerated the book when he wasn’t looking.

* * *

Oliver is out of the hospital, training to get back into shape again, when he takes on his first mission since the Dark Archer’s brutal assault on him. It involves a disgraced firefighter-murdering arsonist - yeah, he never does things by the half-measure. It’s during and after the final showdown with Garfield Linze that they discover Felicity does, in fact, have a weakness: fire.

Verdant is ablaze, a major fire having been set by Linze. Oliver is too concerned about the dozens of civilians whose lives are in danger to consider Hooding up to confront him. He, Diggle and Tommy focus on getting everybody out to safety as they await the police and firemen. In the midst of the chaos, Felicity yells to them that she’s going to check in the storeroom around the back to make sure the staff have got out. She’s been helping out behind the bar all evening as a favor to Oliver.

Out at the front of the building, which has entirely gone up in flames (suggesting an accelerant has been used) Oliver and Diggle search around anxiously, hoping to catch a glimpse of the blonde to assure themselves that she managed to escape. There’s a possibility she slipped downstairs into the Foundry, which is sealed off and fire-proofed. The police are checking that everybody on the guest list is safe, though, which means she has to make an appearance soon, otherwise they’ll class her as a missing person.

“I’m calling her,” Diggle says, troubled. “She should be here by now.”

Oliver shakes his head. “She’s - I’m sure she’s fine,” he insists, trying to convince himself. “She’s not human, she’s a hundred times more resilient… ARGUS said no known weaknesses.”

He’s interrupted when a shrill, excruciating screeching sound slices through the air, sounding like a cat being murdered, a thousand babies screaming and a wolf howl at the same time. It’s so disorientating, reverberating through Oliver’s brain, that he staggers and falls to his knees. He’s not the only one who hears it. Diggle bends over at the waist with an agonized expression, and everybody else, police and civilians alike, look sickened as they cover their ears to try and shield themselves from the awful noise.

 _What the FUCK_ , Diggle mouths in horror to Oliver.

That sound was not human. And there’s only one person they know who is also not human who could make it.

Diggle distracts Tommy and the police so Oliver can slip away. He sprints into the back alley where there’s a secret entrance down to the Foundry, and luckily there’s not much fire damage on this side of the building, so he’s able to descend the stairs safely. The lights inside the Foundry are flickering, casting the space into partial darkness. The archer treads carefully, heading to switch on the emergency lamps, but freezes when he hears faint, harsh wheezing.

The darkness is _not darkness_. It’s made of shadows. Felicity’s shadows, he reckons, because they’re strangely warm and feel less like they’re swallowing him, and more like they’re enveloping him in a soft blanket.

“Felicity?” Oliver whispers hesitantly.

There’s a beat of tense silence and then the shadows recede a little. Oliver follows to where they’ve retreated to and swallows when he sees two emerald-jet eyes glowing in the pitch black, so piercing that he feels like they’re penetrating down to his very soul.

“Don’t come near me,” Felicity replies, in a voice that’s incredibly weak but is echoed by a rough, deep timbre. It’s a warning, not a threat. “I’m not… in control of myself right now. In the cabinet below the sink, there’s a two-liter bottle of water, marked SW. I need you to bring it to me, please.”

Oliver nods, and cautiously moves to the small kitchenette so he can grab it. As he’s walking, he crosses a patch of light that Felicity’s shadows haven't reached. There’s a small pool of oily black liquid puddled on the floor. It smells distinctly metallic, with an iridescent sheen. His heart leaps into his throat, and he clenches his jaw in concern. Blood. It’s not human blood, but it is _definitely_ blood.

Is that what Felicity’s blood looks like? More importantly, if she’s bleeding, then she’s been hurt. Oliver didn’t even think that was possible. Not only because Felicity is - well, Leviathan, but also because she’s incredibly nimble and fast when she wants to be, and he honestly isn’t sure whether or not she’s capable of teleporting considering how quickly she can get from one place to another without detection.

“It’s okay,” Felicity says quietly. “I’m not going to bite your head off, you can ask.”

“What happened?” he asks. “And how?”

“Structural beam fell on me,” she grumbles. “I was trying to hold it up so Jennifer could escape. It warped because it was red-hot from the fire… I didn’t expect it to bend so it burned my arm.”

He warily questions, “ _Just_ your arm?”

“As far as human limbs go, yes.”

That sounds serious. Oliver would suggest they go to the hospital but considering Felicity’s not even human, he wonders if they could even do something to help her heal. “I have the water.” He carries the giant bottle over to her, averting his eyes because he can tell by her demeanor that she doesn’t want him looking at her. The water in the bottle itself is murky and cloudy. He has the faintest suspicion that it’s seawater. “What do you want me to do with it?”

Out of the darkness, an arm appears in his vision. There’s a deep six-inch-long welt on Felicity’s forearm that looks ghastly and has to be mind-numbingly painful. Thick black blood drips from the crusty wound. “Pour about a quarter of it on, please?”

Oliver furrows his brow in apprehension. “Is that… sanitary?”

“Please, Oliver?” she pleads.

He prays to God that he isn’t going to end up in hell for this, and slowly pours the salty, dirty water over the third-degree burn. The moment it hits the burned flesh, the water sizzles and steams. The archer stops for a second, horrified, but Felicity grunts at him to keep going so he does, until a quarter of the water has been used. Oliver caps the bottle with tears in his eyes because Felicity is minutely shaking from the pain, her arm now limp in his grasp. When he examines the wound again, though, his jaw drops in astonishment.

The burn is _healing itself_. He can practically see Felicity’s skin knitting back together and smoothing out the blemishes. Before he can properly get a look, however, Felicity snatches her arm back and releases a thunderous snarl, that is entirely too deep and powerful for a normal twenty-three-year-old woman to make. The sound sends a rush of ice down Oliver’s spine and makes his hairs rise, body itching to run, but he forces down his fear.

“Thank you,” Felicity finally says, her voice back to normal.

Oliver gingerly raises his gaze to meet hers, on his guard. He’s relieved to see her eyes are back to their usual burning cobalt. “How?”

“I draw strength from the ocean. The seawater is like… a battery for me. Pass me the bottle, please. I think I can cover the rest of my, um, limbs.”

“Are you sure you’re gonna be okay?”

“It’s sweet of you to worry, Oliver, and I appreciate that you care, but I promise I will be fine.” There’s a beat and then she murmurs apologetically, “You need to forget that this ever happened, though.”

She could probably _make_ him forget if she wanted, the archer muses. She is respecting their friendship though and choosing to trust him instead. “That what ever happened?”

She chuckles. “Good boy,” he praises teasingly.

Linze’s charred and broken body is recovered from Verdant the next day. The police are immensely confused when the cause of death is determined to be _poison_ , rather than anything fire-related. Oliver is bemused as well and spends an hour after discovering that information researching poisonous sea creatures, because he should probably know if Felicity is poisonous or not.

Felicity brings him Big Belly Burger for dinner. She’s completely healed and there’s no evidence she was ever injured in the first place. The seawater did wonders, although Oliver has no idea how.

The blonde sits down beside him and without blinking, says, “Venomous, not poisonous.”

He pales. She knows what he’s been researching. She must have seen everything. Oh god, why didn’t he wipe his internet history?

Felicity digs into her curly fries with gusto, humming a Fleetwood Mac song happily under her breath.


	2. part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whoa guys. i was blown away by the response to the 1st part of this fic. thank you all so much for your support and appreciation, i cannot tell you how overjoyed i was to read and hear that you've all fallen in love with leviathan!felicity as much as i have!!!
> 
> a big happy birthday to my boy oliver queen and also a huge happy birthday to one of my best friends sam (@ghostfoxlovely) who is just a wonderful person!!
> 
> hope you enjoy the 2nd part
> 
> **Trigger Warnings** : there are discussions and descriptions of non-human entities consuming both animals and humans in this fic. there are also references and discussion to/of depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, suicidal thoughts and drug abuse

Oliver has two phones: his personal cell and his Hood burner phone. Felicity _never_ calls the burner phone, just out of personal preference, so when she does call it one early evening at the end of January, Oliver is instantly concerned something has gone wrong. Switching his voice modulator on, he answers but decides to ask her for her challenge code - it’s a system he, Diggle, and Felicity have come up with so they can confirm it’s truly them at the other end of the line.

“Code in,” he rumbles.

A recognizable male voice replies steadily, “Latte Ada Jonas 11900.”

It’s his step-father. Oliver reels back in shock and confusion, baffled as to how Walter could have Felicity’s phone _and_ know her challenge-response. “Who are you, why do you have Felicity Smoak’s phone, how do you know her code and why are you calling?” he growls.

“My name is Walter Steele and I’m the CEO of Queen Consolidated. Felicity has been helping me conduct a top-secret investigation for the past two months that I fear has now placed her life in grave peril. We were sitting in her office and she was walking me through some of the evidence she collected, when she suddenly said we were in danger. She passed me her cell phone, told me to call speed-dial 3 and not the police, and wrote down that code on a scrap of paper before making me stand still in the corner of the room. Four men in black balaclavas then broke in and kidnapped her, but somehow did not notice me at all.” Walter pauses and then adds, “I presume I’m talking to the vigilante. Felicity has hinted before that she works with you but I’ve never had confirmation.”

“You presume correctly.” Oliver squashes down his rising panic, grabbing a notebook so he can hastily scribble this information down. “Was Felicity wearing a silver ring on her left hand’s middle finger when she was taken?”

“Yes, why?”

“The ring has a GPS tracker in it so we can locate her.” He sets the program up on Felicity’s monitors so it can pinpoint her location, but Oliver is astutely aware that it won’t be able to pick up coordinates until she’s in a set position and no longer being moved. Oliver smashes his fist down onto the table in frustration. It took so much persuasion to get Felicity to wear the tracker ring and she only agreed to it because it only tracks her when activated. All of QC’s CCTV has been shut down. Whoever kidnapped Felicity knew what they were doing. “Who and what were you investigating with Miss Smoak’s aid?”

Walter doesn’t respond for a moment, but eventually replies in a very reluctant tone, “Malcolm Merlyn and my wife, Moira Queen, for embezzlement, multiple counts of murder, and conspiracy to commit terrorism.”

Tommy’s _father_ and his _mother_? For murder and terrorism!? Oliver’s instinct is to deny it, but he closes his eyes and bows his head, exhaling with a shudder. Felicity wouldn’t be helping Walter investigate without reason and without evidence, which means… there has to be some level of truth in it. “Mr Steele, I need you to tell me everything you know,” he commands.

And Walter does. He tells Oliver about Tempest, the money trails, the warehouse with the salvaged Queen’s Gambit, Moira and Malcolm’s shady behavior, and the other copy of the List he found in Moira’s possession. The GPS tracker search continues to run. By the end of his step-father’s explanation, Oliver is seething but also utterly aghast at how much he has missed - and how much Felicity has managed to keep secret from him. He says as much to Walter, telling the man that he was not aware of any of this going on, and Walter guiltily responds that he swore Felicity to complete secrecy, and requested she lies to everybody about what she’s been doing, in order not to jeopardize the investigation.

That helps Oliver understand slightly; Felicity is somebody who deeply respects the need to keep some things under wraps and is not the sort of person who breaks other peoples’ confidences in her. Walter even says that he specifically asked Felicity to keep this secret from Oliver, as he knew it would distress him and even trigger his PTSD, possibly ruining the archer and IT girl’s friendship. Lost for words, Oliver thanks him and hangs up, after promising to keep Walter updated.

Felicity clearly didn’t want to lie to him, but still chose to. It’s hurtful. But at the same time, Oliver can understand her position, as a lot of what Walter and Felicity were investigating were simply suspicions, although the evidence was mounting up. They didn’t want to get Oliver involved before they had something absolutely concrete. Either way, he will definitely be having a blunt conversation with Felicity later - after they’ve recovered her.

Because Felicity Smoak, his puppy of a partner who is actually a giant-ass sea monster, has been kidnapped.

Oliver is pacing anxiously in front of the monitor set-up when Diggle skids in, having received his frantic texts. After the archer fills him in on everything and the bodyguard is suitably horrified, he settles down in Felicity’s chair and the two of them continue to wait for the GPS tracker to ping and give them a location. Running his fingers through his sweaty hair in a nervous manner, Oliver grinds his teeth, contemplating murder, because how _dare_ people kidnap Felicity?

_His_ Felicity. His best friend and partner. He knows that she can look after herself, but he still feels protective over her, which is stupid considering what she is and how powerful she is. But he cares about her. He _loves_ \- no. The archer rubs his face harshly with his hands. No, he can’t say that. He knows his truth, but he won’t go as far as admitting it.

“Calm down, man,” Diggle finally says, once Oliver has paced circles around the Foundry at least two dozen times. “Felicity’s no damsel in distress. I’m sure she’s going to be fine.”

Oliver halts and shakes his head, expression morphing into one of dread. “I’m not worried _for_ Felicity. I’m worried about what she’s going to do to the men who took her.”

Diggle’s face turns ashen. “You don’t think…”

“I don’t _know_ , Dig!” he hisses, frustrated. “She’s - you _know_ what she is. Or we know what we think she is. There’s a reason why everybody she meets instinctively fears her. ARGUS is deathly afraid of her. She bit or - _somethinged_ Linze two weeks ago and he died because she’s somehow venomous, we know she likes annoying raccoons as late-night snacks - _God knows_ how she’ll react and treat her own kidnappers.”

The two of them fall into a strained silence. Oliver’s right calf begins to cramp so he collapses down into a chair next to his partner, leaning and tipping his head back in exhaustion. The thing is, the truth about Felicity’s identity and species has been weighing on the three members of the team for a while now, and the two men have been struggling to bear the size of it. They barely know anything about her apart from things they’ve picked up from observing her, or learned by accident; Felicity is still a mystery to them both, and yet they trust her with their lives.

“Have you never actually talked to her about, you know, what she is?” Diggle asks awkwardly.

Oliver shoots him an incredulous look. “No, of course not. She gets all huffy and glares at me if I even hint at bringing it up.”

“I just thought with the two of you dating and everything -”

“Wait, stop,” he cuts Diggle off bemusedly. “What the hell do you mean? Felicity and I aren’t dating.”

If possible, Diggle looks even more bewildered. “No, you have to be. You’ve been going on coffee dates every Tuesday for the last four months, dinner numerous times, and you spend more time around her apartment than you do at the mansion.”

“We’re just friends. Best friends,” he insists. Diggle raises a disbelieving eyebrow. Oliver’s stomach drops. “How many people think we’re dating?”

“Your mother, sister, and step-father, for sure,” he replies. “And 78% of the rest of Starling.”

“That’s a very precise figure.”

“There was a poll on the city’s most popular gossip blog after photos of the two of you getting dinner at Table Salt leaked. I’m betting that the 22% of people who voted no or unsure are either jealous of Felicity and want to be her, or have met or seen her at some point and experienced that awful gut reaction to her.” Crossing his arms, Diggle adds, “The most important person you _should_ be wanting to know if they think you are dating, is Felicity herself. She looks at you like you’ve hung the sun, moon and stars, Oliver, and that’s saying something, since she’s - most likely an ancient sea goddess with unfathomable power.”

The archer shakes his head. “That’s impossible. Felicity doesn’t love me.”

“You certain about that?”

“We’re talking on the level of a lion falling in love with an ant. Compared to Felicity and all that she is, I’m… inconsequential. I have no meaning next to her.”

“Don’t let Felicity hear you say that,” Diggle warns. “You know she hates it when you put yourself down. You mean a hell of a lot to her.”

“I mean a lot to her like a dog means a lot to its owner. She’ll love me but she’ll never be _in_ love with me” Oliver lowers his gaze to the ground, shoulders slumping as misery twists his guts. “I’m human and she’s - _everything_. Leviathan are rumored to be immortal, Diggle, existing outside of our reality, and therefore unaffected by the evolution of time and space. We have no idea how old Felicity is, but she’s dropped hints, and I’m betting she’s _thousands_ of years old. I’m probably a fleeting, insignificant _infant_ in her eyes. I might as well be her pet.”

Diggle hits him with a look that is so sympathetic that Oliver feels like crawling into a dark hole and remaining there for several days. In the end, though, they abandon their conversation as the GPS locator pings and gives them the coordinates of where Felicity has been taken.

It’s still light out so Oliver can’t risk Hooding up, as he’ll be too conspicuous. It appears that Felicity is being held down in a warehouse on the docks - given that there’s been no ransom demand, Oliver is led to believe that this has something to do with her and his step-father’s investigation, and Felicity was only taken as she managed to hide Walter’s presence. They update the man to let him know they have her location, and assure him that they’ll get Felicity back.

Oliver and Diggle rush downtown, prepared to storm in guns blazing once they find the right warehouse. They’ll do whatever it takes to rescue Felicity - but it turns out she doesn’t actually need much saving.

When they bust through the doors, battle-ready, Felicity is calmly standing in the center of the space, completely alone and wringing murky seawater out of her hair. She’s completely drenched and should be freezing, but seems wholly unaffected by this. Her kidnappers are nowhere to be seen and the chair they tied her to is smashed on the floor, nylon ropes ripped and torn to shreds.

“Are you okay?” Oliver asks immediately.

She nods enthusiastically, with a beaming smile. “You came!” She sounds thrilled.

Felicity rushes up to Oliver at an inhuman speed and throws herself into his arms. The archer swiftly switches on his gun’s safety so he can stick it in his waistband and embrace her tightly. Exhaling in relief, he buries his face in her wet hair, not caring at how she smells of seaweed.

“Where are the guys who kidnapped you?” Diggle questions, once he’s hugged Felicity as well.

The blonde shrugs. “Gone. They said they worked for Malcolm Merlyn, though - has Walter told you about Tempest now?” When the men nod, she grins sheepishly. “Sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I wanted to get you involved but since we barely had any evidence and Walter asked me to keep the investigation secret, I didn’t know when the right time would be. I can tell you all about it now, though!”

“That’s great,” the archer replies, but he’s rather distracted by the first thing that Felicity said. Specifically, the first word. “Look, I’m relieved you’re safe, but what do you mean by gone?”

“Doesn’t matter much now, you’ve saved me and now we can get to work on finding out what Tempest, Merlyn, and your apparently evil mom are up to, because I think they might try and destroy the city and we should probably stop them.”

Oliver is truly baffled, but as Felicity skips past him, he spots a miniscule splatter of crimson on her soaking wet cardigan and his stomach lurches. It’s blood. Human blood. A terrible realization hits him like a cobra’s strike. Felicity ate them. She _ate_ her kidnappers. He always knew she’s capable of eating humans, as all the literature and scripture said Leviathans were man-eating monsters, but… _Felicity?_ The men kidnapped her… they hurt her… they probably deserved it, he tries to convince himself. They were bad people. Felicity took her vengeance and enacted justice on her own terms, as she’s well within her rights to do so.

But she _ate them_.

And the worst part of it is that an awful part of his brain is _proud_ of her for defending herself like that. Jesus, no, the worst part of it is that he’s _even more attracted_ to her now.

“Everything alright, Oliver?” Felicity asks brightly.

“Fine,” he lies.

“Great,” she grins toothily at him. _Too many teeth._ “I’m starving, can we get Chinese on the way back to the Foundry?”

* * *

Needless to say, Oliver and Diggle decide from that point onwards to never break one of Felicity’s rules again, lest they irritate her and she eats them.

The last time they ran afoul of her was when the two men used her monitors without permission to watch football. And… well. She threatened to devour their livers.

* * *

Thea’s 18th birthday party occurs a couple of days after Felicity’s kidnapping and ‘rescue’, and it’s a ginormous disaster. Oliver whines to Felicity that morning that he’s going to be alone there and bored and surrounded by horny teenage girls who will be flirting with him all night, and to his delight, the blonde reluctantly agrees to accompany him, to mostly drive the girls who want to jump his bones away.

She arrives at the Queen mansion in a plaid shirt and the skinniest black ripped jeans the archer has ever seen and he can’t keep his eyes off the exposed parts of her thighs, much to his own embarrassment. Thea doesn’t greet Felicity at all, busy chatting with her school friends, but she does cast a dubious glance over at her, as if to question why she’s attending her party. His sister backs off though when Oliver places a possessive hand on Felicity’s shoulder, leading her outside onto the backyard’s patio, where they can sit away from the crowd. Their tactic works and none of the girls end up approaching the archer; he can see them pouting and huffing from about fifteen feet away, but they’re too wary of Felicity to get any closer.

“Your mom bought Thea a _Maserati?_ ” Felicity says in disbelief, stirring her virgin mojito with a sprig of mint. “That’s insane!”

“I think Mom’s just trying to be fair,” he shrugs. He’s nursing a club soda. Diggle is on duty tonight, monitoring the Blackhawk Squad Protection Group, which they suspect has been performing armored truck heists. If the vigilante is needed out in the field, he needs to keep a clear head. “Dad bought me a car on my 18th birthday. Although… I could back it out of the driveway without hitting a tree.”

Felicity suddenly breaks into a huge grin. “I would love to see you try and drive my Mini Cooper.”

“Are you kidding? No way. I won’t be caught dead in that thing. It’s a metal box on wheels.”

“No need to be rude,” she admonishes. “And… your cell phone is about to ring.”

Oliver frowns and then, just as Felicity predicted, it starts to chirp a second later. Weird supernatural senses, he reckons. It’s Diggle to report that there’s another armored truck heist about to happen, and that he needs Oliver as back-up. He expects Felicity to demand to come with him, but surprisingly, she suggests that she stay here at the party. Oliver catches her looking over his shoulder at a smaller group of girls hanging by the side of the pool and wonders if Felicity has picked up some alarming behavior from them, which she wants to observe for longer. Walter is here at the party too so he knows she won’t be alone; he’s still hesitant about leaving her, but agrees when she insists he needs to go now.

He and Diggle take down the gang seconds before they’re about to use a grenade launcher to destroy the truck. Tension runs high when they realize Diggle’s former commanding officer and former mentor, Ted Gaynor, is running the operation, and the man tries to plead to Dig to let him go. The stand-off is strained but eventually broken up by SCPD arriving. Oliver and Diggle make a quick escape while the gang is arrested.

On their way back to the foundry, however, Oliver gets a call from Felicity. Diggle is making his own way back while the archer rides his bike, and he’s lucky he has his comm unit in.

“I need you to meet me at my apartment,” she says tersely, immediately raising his hackles. “Thea saw your mom and Merlyn having a discussion in the kitchen, and I think she might have thought that she’s cheating on Walter with him. Her friends offered her a drug called Vertigo and she took it. I know about this drug; it doesn’t create a euphoria like other recreationals, all it does is amplify your current emotions. Because Thea was so upset, she tried to go for a joyride in her Maserati while high. I managed to stop her before she got off the driveway - nobody was hurt, thank god. I knocked her out to bring her here because she… didn’t react all that well to seeing me, and she’s sleeping on the couch. She’s fine, she’s not overdosing, and I’ve been checking her every ten minutes. I’ve texted Walter so that he knows that she’s here, but I think she really needs her big brother right now.”

Devastation crashes over Oliver like a tidal wave. His sister has been spiraling ever since he arrived home, and he’s been chalking it up to teenage rebellion. It’s clear now, though, that there’s something much more depressing and dark at work. He’s been ignoring that possibility - and his mother has been too. “Does Mom know?” he asks, his voice breaking.

“I’m not sure,” Felicity replies. She sounds strangely calm. “She will if and when Walter tells her. I think your family seriously needs to consider getting Thea into rehab or therapy, Oliver. If I hadn’t stopped her, she could have hit somebody and killed them, or even crashed her car and killed herself.”

It’s true, and that’s what makes it all the more heartbreaking. Oliver showers and changes back into civilian clothes as fast as he can when he gets to the foundry, and then speeds over to Felicity’s apartment. She’s waiting for him with a morose expression and points over to the couch, where his little sister is lying, passed out. She looks so vulnerable and young and tired. She’s got a pulse oximeter strapped to her finger; her heart rate is a little high, but stable. Exhaling shakily, he sits down on the floor in front of the couch cross-legged, head in his hands as the shame overtakes him. He should have seen this, he should have spotted how much Thea was struggling.

“It’s okay, Oliver,” Felicity says quietly, rubbing his back. “She’s safe now. We can get her the help she needs.”

“You said one of her friends gave her the drugs?” Oliver wants to find out who it was and strange them.

“Yes. I questioned them, and got the name of their dealer.” Felicity collapses down onto the ground beside him, throwing a cushion down just before so she can curl up to him comfortably. “With your permission, I would like to go and track down the dealer tonight. I’ll be able to find out where they’re sourcing the drug from.”

Oliver doesn’t ask how. He knows at this point that Felicity has her ways - illegal hacking ones, and supernatural ones - and that if she says she can do it, she can and will. “If you cut the source, then the drug operation is forced to entirely shut down.”

“Exactly.”

He sighs, focused on his sister’s face. “Go,” he tells her. “Make them pay for this.”

Her eyes darkening and shadows growing slightly larger around her, Felicity inclines her head in a sharp nod and rises. She grabs a black leather jacket from the table and yanks on sneakers, and then she’s gone, taking nothing else. She doesn’t need weapons, Oliver reminds himself, because she herself is the weapon, just like him.

An hour later, Thea wakes up. She instantly breaks down in her brother’s arms, sobbing about how her life has fallen to ruins and that she doesn’t know what’s real and what’s not anymore, and feels empty inside. His heart being wrenched out of his chest, Oliver cradles her protectively, crying himself because he remembers feeling like that too, that life is too complicated to be worth living and that everything feels pointless. Back on the island, when the days were rough and he didn’t know if he was going to survive to see the next sunrise, he sometimes considered ending it all just to try and reach something resembling peace. That was never a true option, though, Shado and Slade taught him. He had so much more to live for than he knew. Now he, Moira, and Walter will just have to reach Thea with the same philosophy.

His mother and step-father turn up at the apartment once Thea has calmed down enough to be able to sip at some tea Oliver makes from the island herbs he’s brought from his chest, which should help her sober up. They’re equally as distraught as the archer seeing Thea’s condition. His sister isn’t in the right frame of mind to be having a proper conversation about therapy and rehab, so Moira and Walter just decide to take her home instead.

As Felicity isn’t back yet, Oliver informs them that he’s going to stay, lying to say that she went out to grab extra painkillers from the nearest 24-hour convenience store and is expecting him to be here when she gets back. There’s a short back and forth discussion between his mother and step-father about how they could possibly repay Felicity for saving Thea’s life, but Oliver cuts in to tell them that he’ll sort out a thank you to them - his mother’s show of gratitude will be a bit too grandeur for Felicity’s taste, and he can tell that Walter might go over-the-top as well.

It’s close to 3am by the time the blonde returns, looking haggard but a gleam of triumph in her glowing eyes. She’s also stumbling a little, which is very out of character for her. When Oliver opens the front door to her, utterly relieved, he yelps in shock when she tackles him onto the couch, purring like a kitten and snuggling up to his chest, nuzzling at his neck. Aghast at her behavior, he checks her pulse. It’s racing and a little erratic.

“Dealt with the evil drug baron person man,” Felicity boasts, incredibly bright. Her pupils are blown wide. Oh god. She’s high. She’s definitely high. “Tracker - tracked down the dealer and then the big boss Vertigo dude and bit him, but - but his blood tasted all icky and yucky and sour, and now I’m really hungry.” She boops him on the nose. “Don’t worry though, Ollie-Ollie-Oxen-Free, you _look_ good enough to eat but you’re far too pretty to munch on. Gonna get some mint chip instead.”

She slides off Oliver’s body, but instead of standing and staggering over to the freezer… she pools on the ground, looking dazedly up at the ceiling with a serene smile.

He drops down beside her, lifting her chin up delicately with a finger to check she hasn’t hurt herself. “Are you okay?” he asked concernedly.

“Whoa, my knees stopped working!” she gasps. The expression of wonder on her face is honestly adorable. “Knees are weird, you know. I don’t have knees or kneecaps in my true form, because I just have my tentacles and fins. I had to grow kneecaps when I assumed a human body because I didn’t realize you had them at first, did you know that, Oliver? And babies - human babies don’t even _have_ kneecaps! They just have cartilage that starts turning into bone when they’re toddlers and finishes calcifying completely when they’re pre-teens! Humans and kneecaps are _wild_.”

“I’m sure they are,” he replies, lost for words. “Felicity, if I make you some tea, will you drink it? I think it will help you feel a lot better.”

Felicity wrinkles her nose and complains with a pout, “I don’t _wanna_ drink the nasty island herb tea, Oliver! It tastes like armpits!” A laugh bursts out of his mouth at that. “Don’t laugh at me, mister GQ model, you’ve never tasted an armpit before, you dunno what it’s like!”

“You’re right, I don’t,” Oliver agrees. While this is amusing, it’s also worrying that the Vertigo drug is affecting Felicity like this in the first place. “How about you drink the tea and then you can eat the entire tub of mint chip as a reward?”

“Hmm… deal.”

Whinging about armpits the whole time, Felicity finishes a cup of the herbal tea and then is happy to let Oliver bundle her up in blankets and carry her into her bedroom, where she ravenously finishes two pints of icecream, one mint chip and the other cherry garcia. Smiling at how giggly she is, Oliver perches on the edge of the bed, smoothing down the comforter. Already the drugs are wearing off, leaving her exhausted. Her yawns are terrifying because he gets a very good look at her teeth, which are _sharp_ , but they’re tiny puppy yawns at the same time so they’re also pretty cute.

“You’re tired, you should probably get some sleep,” he says gently.

“Okay!” Felicity chirps. “Let me just get into my PJs!”

And then, without any warning whatsoever, she stands, whips off her shirt and _tosses her bra in Oliver’s face._

Frozen with astonishment, he stares at her with his jaw dropped, desperately trying to resist the urge to let his eyes wander down her body as she continues to strip.

“Um, Felicity, shouldn’t I have stepped out before you…” he starts to say, his voice strained.

“Nah, we’re best friends,” she replies cheerfully. “You can see my boobs! I don’t mind. I’ve seen you shirtless all the time!”

“Yes, but I don’t have breasts.”

“Stupid human societal casual sexism,” she huffs. “Boobs aren’t inherently sexual, you know, Oliver! They’re for feeding babies.”

“I… guess you’re right.” Swallowing, Oliver forces himself to raise his gaze to the ceiling. His pants are suddenly very inappropriately tight.

Crossing the room, he drapes Felicity’s shirt and bra over the back of her dresser chair. Thankfully, when he turns back around, the blonde has wrestled herself into some cute cartoon dinosaur pajamas and flopped onto her bed. That was probably the most awkward moment of Oliver’s life and he has seen and suffered through a _lot_. Tucking her in under the blankets and making sure she’s warm, he checks Felicity’s temperature and pulse one last time to make sure her vitals are steady - she’s cold, as she always is to his touch, and her heart rate is lower and closer to her normal baseline.

“Nooo, don’t leave,” Felicity moans, when he brushes a kiss against her forehead and wheels around to make his exit. She clings to his hand. “Stay, stay, stay! I wanna cuddle with my Oliver.”

“Your Oliver?”

“Yes, you’re mine, all mine.” There’s no way he can rip his wrist out of her grasp what with her being so immensely strong, so Oliver gives in and sits back down on the bed next to her. “Yay! Sleepover time! This is my first sleepover _ever!_ ”

This might be Oliver’s first ‘sleepover’ where he’ll actually… sleep. He doesn’t say that aloud, however, and instead responds, “Sorry we didn’t make s’mores or have a pillow fight.”

“Hug me with your huge body and you’ll make it up to me,” she sings, shooting him puppy dog eyes and holding her arms open.

She’s adorable. Oliver can’t resist. He kicks his shoes off, shaking his head as she cheers, and then slides under the blankets and pulls the blonde into an embrace. Within minutes, she’s purring and nuzzling up to him again as she did on the couch about ten minutes ago. Nobody would ever guess that she’s actually an enormous man-eating sea monster, seeing her be so cuddly and sweet. Closing her eyes, Felicity wraps her arms around his waist and sighs contently.

He’ll just stay until she falls asleep.

Yeah, just until she falls asleep.

Ten minutes later, Oliver is snoring with Felicity splayed out over his torso, equally as dead to the world.

* * *

“Can we please not talk about what happened last night,” Felicity groans, when she peeks through the crack in her front door the next day.

Oliver shifts on his feet nervously in front of her, holding a bottle of wine behind his back. He woke up panicked that morning and made his escape from Felicity’s bed just before dawn, before she could wake up and discover he’d stayed the whole night. “What kind of best friend would I be if I didn’t tease you about it mercilessly for the rest of your life, though?”

Felicity bangs her head against the door frame. “ _So embarrassing_. Why my stupidly fast metabolism didn’t kick in and help me sober up faster…”

“I thought you were cute.”

“Don’t,” she whines. “I’m never ever taking drugs again. Please at least tell me I didn’t _expose_ other parts of myself.”

“Non-human parts? No. Although you were under blankets, so if you did, I wouldn’t have seen them.”

She narrows her eyes at him and opens the front door slightly wider, so she can inch half of her body out and poke his arm. “What are you holding behind your back?”

“Ah. Right. Well, my mom, Walter, and I wanted to thank you for basically saving Thea’s life last night. She’s meeting her new therapist for the first time today and Dr Lamb is seeing her later to discuss potential antidepressant prescriptions for her. So, I know how much you like red wine, and we’ve had this sitting in our wine cellar for a decade…” He reveals the wine bottle to her with a lop-sided, shy smile.

Felicity’s eyes turn as round as plates. “Is that a Château Lafite-Rothschild 1982?”

“Is it.”

“Oliver, that’s - that’s a $25,000 bottle of wine! I can’t accept that as a gift!” she protests.

“Walter wanted to give you the entire case,” he says dryly.

She whimpers, hiding her face behind her hands. “ _OLIVER!_ ”

“Take it, Felicity, please. You _saved my sister’s life_. That’s worth far more than $25,000. None of us drink red wine all that much these days, and my dad was always the wine fanatic in the family. He would want you to have it.” When she continues to shake her head vehemently, Oliver suggests, “How about I come in and we binge-watch the Narnia movies while drinking it together?”

Frowning, she exhales and kicks the door fully open, yanking him in by his collar and making him laugh. “Fine! But only because it’s been over a year since I’ve seen them. We are not watching _Voyage of the Dawn Treader_ though, that movie is blatantly racist towards sea monsters!”

(They’re halfway through _Prince Caspian_ when the breaking news announcement cuts in, stating that the SCPD have discovered the body of the notorious drug criminal The Count, poisoned and dry drowned. Felicity looks smug and tries to throw back some popcorn into her mouth. It bounces off her forehead instead and ends up down her bra.

The same bra she chucked at Oliver’s head last night.

He says nothing.)

* * *

After about two weeks or trying to dig up more information about Merlyn, his mother and their proposed ‘Undertaking’, which is what Felicity has heard them call their destructive plan from tapped phone calls, Oliver gives in to her and Diggle’s pushing to confront his mother. He decides, however, to do it under his hood rather than as himself. He reckons that Moira will be more inclined to give up information to a terrifying vigilante pointing an arrow at her, than to her nosy son.

Thanks to Felicity’s superb hacking skills, they discover that Moira will be at QC for a late-night international conference call on Wednesday. Walter has gone abroad to England for the week to attend his cousin’s wedding, leaving Moira as acting CEO until he returns. Her being busy on that call until around 10pm will give Oliver the opportunity to slip into her office and lie in wait for her under the cover of darkness. Felicity expresses concern that Moira might just go home straight after the call, but the archer reassures her; he knows his mother well and she prefers to personally write up her meeting notes directly after so she doesn’t forget anything, and she’ll return to her office to do so.

Analyzing QC’s security footage gives them a timeframe for Oliver to sneak inside the building from the roof, and down to the executive offices without the risk of being caught by guards. Felicity can hack the CCTV and stream fake recordings to hide him entering and exiting the elevator. Escaping after interrogating his mother is going to be his main issue, but Felicity dryly suggests just shooting out the window and ziplining to the opposite building. She’s taken back when Oliver agrees its a good idea with a smirk.

Wednesday evening, Oliver is suiting up to prepare for the infiltration when Felicity approaches him, a hard, determined expression on her face. “I’m coming with you,” she tells him.

Oliver shakes his head instantly. “No, absolutely not. I need you here to run the CCTV hack and monitor my mother’s movements.”

“The code for the hack is going to be automatically deployed at 9:30pm exactly for ten minutes, which is more than enough time for you to get from the roof to the office. Diggle can stay here and watch your mom.” The blonde raises her chin defiantly, her blue eyes gleaming with an otherworldly shine. “I am _coming with you_. The last time you confronted somebody to do with the Undertaking, you were almost killed.”

“That was the Dark Archer, and we don’t know that he was hired by Merlyn,” Oliver reminds her. 

Felicity has had this theory for a while now, that the Dark Archer is an assassin that Tempest uses to dispose of people who are threats to them. She claims it makes sense, because if Merlyn and his mother figured out the vigilante (him) is targeting the criminal elite using a copy of the book with the list of names that Moira had, they would want to take him out. There is some evidence there, Oliver has to admit, but it isn’t enough to entirely confirm her suspicion.

“Also, this is my _mother_ , we’re talking about,” he continues. “She’s not going to hurt me, I’m her son.”

Diggle snorts from where he’s sitting at Felicity’s set-up, munching on chips and watching the live QC CCTV feeds. “She’s not gonna know that,” he points out. “You’ll be all trussed up in green leather and a hood, aiming an arrow at her. Maybe she won’t hurt Oliver Queen, but she’ll absolutely hurt the vigilante if she has the opportunity to.”

Felicity huffs unhappily. “She’ll hurt Oliver as Oliver too. Walter thinks she’s the one who had you kidnapped and tortured for information about the Gambit and your dad when you first got back.”

“Walter thinks a _lot_ of things, Felicity, but he has no proof,” Oliver groans, running his gloved hand over his face.

Crossing her arms, the blonde fires back, “The fact that there’s _suspicion_ should be enough for you to be wary of her! It wouldn’t surprise me at all if your mom keeps a gun in her desk or something. I _am_ coming with you.” Her voice drops into a growl, which resonates at a deeper pitch than a human voice is possible of.

Oliver’s heart pounds and he swallows nervously. He’s not frightened of her. Quite the opposite, actually. The most awkward part of this is that he finds Felicity kind of hot when she’s angry. He refuses to admit that, though, so he just convinces himself that he’s hesitant because when his best friend gets ragey, she gets _bitey_ , and he needs his fingers to shoot his bow.

“Hey! Are you listening to me?” Felicity snaps, clicking his fingers in front of his face. “I’m coming to QC with you, and I _dare_ you to try and tell me otherwise. If you start up with all that ‘it’s too dangerous’ crap, need I remind you that I am perfectly capable of protecting myself _and_ you, if the need arises.” The archer knows at this point there’s no point in arguing with Felicity - she’s petrifying when she’s stubborn - but his concern must still show on his face, because she sighs and tugs on his sleeve. “I know how to stay out of sight. Your mother won’t even know I’m there.”

Because she’s somehow able to control the darkness, Oliver has learned, and is also able to hide her presence and others from people, if the fact she was able to hide Walter from her kidnappers a few weeks ago is any indication. “Are you going to use your shadow manipulation thing?” he asks curiously, without thinking.

Felicity’s eyes grow dark, like a storm brewing on the ocean’s horizon and beginning to whip up the waves into a frenzy. Her shadows spread over the floor and the lights flicker ominously. Oliver gulps. Over her shoulder, Diggle stares at him open-mouthed with shock, shaking his head frantically as if to tell him to bail. Oliver didn’t mean for the question to come out - he’s frustrated and anxious and sleep-deprived - but at least now he’s making a point to Diggle; he and Felicity do _not_ discuss what she is and what she can do, and now he’s seeing how she reacts when he actually does try to ask her about it.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Felicity replies, in such a flat voice that it sends a shiver down his spine.

Oliver is quite honestly tired at this point of them dancing around the acknowledgment that she is not human and is, in fact, a huge powerful ancient sea monster. He's been thinking that she trusts him since the Linze incident, but evidently he's wrong. “Are we ever going to talk about it?

“Don’t, Oliver,” she replies tightly.

His shoulders slump. He’s not just tired, he’s sad. “We’ve known each other for five months now, Felicity, are you ever going to open up to me?”

She strikes him with a sharp look. “Are you ever going to tell me what happened to you on that island?” Oliver stiffens and instinctively averts his eyes from her fiery gaze, shoulders raised to near his ears as he goes on the defensive, while also submitting to her. He doesn’t talk about what happened on Lian Yu to anybody. Is that what Felicity is trying to get at? That she doesn’t talk about what and who she is to anybody either? “Didn’t think so,” she mutters. Then, again, repeating it for the third time in a stronger voice, “I am coming with you to QC.”

“Yes, you are,” he responds quietly. He can’t say no.

(It’s a good thing Felicity does accompany Oliver, really, because she saves him from being shot.)

She’s like a ghost by the archer’s side as he infiltrates QC, so silent on her feet and merging in with the late-night shadows that he barely notices she’s tailing him. It’s spooky, actually, how easily she’s able to make herself invisible to the naked human eye. They encounter a problem when they reach the CEO’s office, as it’s locked when they didn’t expect it to be. Cursing under his breath, Oliver unzips his jacket to pull his lockpicks out of the inside pocket, but when he glances up again, picks in hand, he’s stunned to see Felicity roll her eyes and simply touch a single finger to the handle - unlocking the door and swinging it open.

She vanishes from his sight the moment they enter the office and take their places, to wait for Moira to arrive. It’s incredibly disconcerting for Oliver to know that Felicity is within the same space as him, _somewhere_ , and he can sense her presence - that curling and twisting in his stomach, the wary buzz at the back of his brain - but he can’t actually see or hear her.

Oliver actually forgets that Felicity is there, when his mother walks in and the interrogation starts. He yells at her aggressively, trying to get answers about Merlyn, the Dark Archer, the Gambit’s sabotage, and the upcoming Undertaking. Moira gives him nothing, falling to her knees and sobbing uncontrollably; she clutches a photo of their family to her chest and pleads for her life, crying that she’s a mother of two children who have already lost a parent. She has a daughter who is depressed and needs her mom’s support to get through it.

Oliver, despite his better judgment, is moved by his mother’s raw emotion. She sounds utterly sincere and there’s no way she can fake the torment in her eyes. He tells her he’s not going to hurt her, and lowers his bow. It’s a mistake. Moira lunges for a gun hidden underneath the desk, turns around and fires at him.

He’s not fast enough to move out of the bullet’s path, especially with obstacles like tables and chairs in the way. For a terrifying, fleeting second, Oliver thinks he’s going to get shot. But then, the instant the handgun’s trigger is pulled, a _huge_ black shadow floods the room, exploding all the lamps and lightbulbs and sending a frigid chill into the air. Pure unadulterated _fear_ rushes through the archer’s veins like stabbing shards of ice, sending him stumbling to his knees. The room suddenly feels incredibly cramped; Felicity’s presence at the back of Oliver’s mind has quadrupled in size. Something snaps out out the darkest corner of the room and stops the bullet in its tracks. When Oliver’s startled gaze flashes over, he reels back when he sees a pair of ferocious glowing eyes peering out of the pitch black.

Moira screams. The shadow engulfs Oliver’s body and he feels like he’s being plunged into Antarctic waters as he’s lifted out and away from the office, through the shattered window and along the set-up zipline. He’s so dazed and confused he barely knows what’s happening, but what the archer _does_ know is that the shadow feels safe and familiar despite the cold. It’s overwhelming and colossal and horrifying, but gentle and soft and _warm_. It feels like Felicity. His senses overloaded, he passes out.

When he wakes up, the dim lights of the Foundry are blinding, and cause his head to pulse painfully. A pained groan escapes his mouth as he lifts his shaking arms to rub his eyes. Oliver blinks and screws up his face when his hands are batted away, a blurry face appearing in his vision. It’s Diggle, looking him over concernedly. The archer flinches and groans again when the bodyguard shines a penlight into his eyes to check for a concussion.

“Welcome back to the land of the living,” Diggle says, sounding relieved. “You were out for about two hours. How are you feeling?”

Oliver swivels his head from side to side, trying to search for the third member of their team, but she’s nowhere to be seen. Heaving himself into a strained sitting position, Oliver closes his eyes to dampen his dizziness and questions forcefully, “Where’s Felicity?”

Diggle’s expression falls. “She, uh, dropped you off here and then bolted. She was… struggling, I think, with containing herself. As in her - her other side. She’s sitting up on the roof, I’ve been keeping an eye on her.” When Oliver makes to push himself off the bench, the man hesitantly places a hand on his shoulder. “Look, man, she was pretty shaken up when she got here with you. Scared _and_ angry. Tread carefully, okay?”

He nods. Diggle backs away and drops down into a chair at Felicity’s workstation, scrolling through CCTV footage from after the confrontation, of police officers swarming QC. Oliver catches sight of a clip where his mother is hysterically sobbing as she’s lead out by a paramedic, which makes his heart clench. Does he feel terrible for what he did to his mother? Yes, of course. But he has conflicting feelings right now knowing that she’s involved in a terrorist group that sabotaged the Gambit and is planning a massive destructive event sometime in the near future - not to mention the fact she just shot at him. Right now, though, his most pressing concern is Felicity. He quickly changes into dark civilian clothes and heads out to find her.

The blonde is huddled in a ball on the edge of Verdant’s roof. The club’s music is muffled but still deafening below and there’s a visible queue of clubgoers waiting to enter. Up here, though, it’s reasonably peaceful. For a second, Oliver is scared Felicity is so close to the ledge that she might topple off, but then he mentally kicks himself. Felicity can absolutely take care of herself and if the bullet she took earlier for him hasn’t hurt her, a two-story fall is definitely not going to.

Felicity has, for the first time ever, no shadow. That might be because of the fact that it’s dark out due to it nearly being midnight, though, and not because she’s pulling hers in. The only light is provided by the two street lamps by Verdant’s entrance; it’s just enough for Oliver to not have to worry about tripping on his way over.

Although Felicity twitches as Oliver silently approaches, she remains mostly still and staring up at the night’s sky, which is a rippling pelt of nightingale blue with a few twinkling stars visible, despite the light pollution from the city. She says nothing as the archer slowly lowers himself down to sit beside her.

When his arm brushes hers, she turns and looks at him, but with an impassive expression. Oliver can see her emotions in her eyes, though. She’s miserable and afraid, for some reason. He shuffles closer so he can wrap his arm around her shoulders and at his touch, she instantly relaxes, the tension leaching out of her. Felicity leans into him and rests her head on his shoulder with a heavy sigh.

“You can say you told me so,” he murmurs into her hair. “I know you must be dying too. You were totally right about my mom having a gun hidden in her desk. Thank you… for whatever you did, to stop the bullet and get us out of there safely. I owe you my life.”

Felicity doesn’t respond for a good minute or two, and when she finally does, its to ask incredulously in a hoarse voice, “You aren’t scared of me?”

“Why would I be scared of you?”

She grits her teeth. “Didn’t you see my real form?”

He hesitates and admits, “It was really dark, so not really. I saw… very little. I felt and sensed you though. I’m not scared.”

“But I’m a monster.” 

He frowns and tips her chin up so they can make eye contact. Her eyes are swimming with tears. “No, you’re not,” he tells her firmly. “You’re anything but a monster, Felicity.”

“Oliver, I am _literally_ a monster,” she replies sadly.

“According to who? ‘Sexist assholes’ like Lovecraft?”

Felicity looks surprised. “You remember me calling him that?”

“You burned my copy of _The Call of Cthulhu_ to a crisp because you were so annoyed, it was rather memorable,” he laughs. Sobering, the archer tells her firmly, “You are not a monster. You are my best friend and I will kick the ass of anybody who calls you that.”

“I’ve never had a best friend before.”

Oliver’s heart aches upon hearing that, but he steels himself and replies with enthusiasm, “Well, you do now, and you are never getting rid of me! I’m a leech, Smoak. Which I think is _much_ worse than what you are.”

She blushes beautifully and hides her face in his shoulder. “You were right earlier, to call me out on not opening up to you,” she whispers, hugging him tightly to herself. “We sort of semi-established that you know what I am and then didn’t address it… it was easier for me to just assume you knew everything from that point onwards and didn’t need any more answers. I don’t… _like_ … talking about myself…”

Oliver nods understandingly, sweeping her hair back over her shoulder and away from her face. “Neither do I. And you offered Dig and I a lot of hints that pointed us in the right direction so you’ve got to give yourself some credit.” He plants a fond kiss on her forehead. “It’s okay, Felicity. I don’t want you to force yourself to talk about it if you feel uncomfortable. I appreciate everything you’ve offered up so far and if you want to open up more in the future, I’ll be here to listen.”

“Thank you,” she mumbles into his shirt.

“Now can I ask you if you’re okay?” he says. When Felicity furrows her brow, he drops his arm from around her shoulders to tug at her sleeve. “You jumped in front of a bullet for me. Or at least, I think you did? Like I said before… it was really dark.”

Felicity traces symbols on the back of his palm that Oliver thinks could possibly be an ancient alphabet. “Bullets are harmless to me. My reflexes are also ten times faster than a human’s so I was able to catch it with, uh -” her cheeks redden, “- one of my… non-human limbs.”

“You can say tentacle,” Oliver snickers. “It’s not a dirty word.”

She shoves him playfully. “Shut up!”

“What color are they? Do they have suckers?”

“Stop, I’ll push you off the roof!” she giggles.

Oliver quickly turns and knocks her onto her back, pinning her wrists and bending down to whisper, “I don’t think you’re strong enough.”

Felicity snorts. “Oh honey, you have _no_ idea, do you?”

In less than a second, she’s escaped his grasp and rolled them away from the edge of the roof, ending up on top of the archer, straddling his waist. Grabbing his wrists, she restrains them with one hand above his head. She smirks smugly when Oliver tries to wriggle them free but is astonished to find that she is immensely stronger than him. He raises an eyebrow and continues trying to fight his way out of her hold, then freezes when he feels something tickling his sides - but both her arms are occupied, as she’s using her other to half support her weight by placing it on the ground.

“Do you have a hentai kink?” Oliver questions teasingly.

“Do you?” she counters. Slipping off his hips, Felicity stands and brushes herself down, extending a hand to help him to his feet. “You know, I’m never gonna be able to see your mom in person again after today.”

Oliver follows her as they make their way back down off the roof. “What do you mean?” he asked in confusion.

“She, uh, she’ll probably figure out that it was me in her office if she sees me again because looking directly at my true form leaves an… imprint, on the human brain, even if it is completely dark and you can’t see me properly.” Felicity casts a sheepish look over her shoulder at him. “She’ll probably either lose her mind, or try and shoot me. So yeah, no visits to the mansion by your best friend anytime soon.”

“Actually, my mom thinks we’re together romantically,” slips out of Oliver’s mouth, before he can stop it. Felicity halts in her tracks and stares back at him, her mouth open in shock. “Yeah. Apparently a lot of people do. All our coffee dates and dinners and me going around your apartment constantly… don’t read as platonic to them. They really do think we’re dating.”

“Oh.” Felicity lowers her gaze to the ground, appearing to be deep in thought.

Oliver shifts nervously from foot to foot. Well, it’s now or never. Gathering every ounce of courage he owns in his body, he asks, “Would you want to… give that a try?”

Felicity blinks at him. “Dating?”

“Yeah. I mean, only if you want to. Not that I’m trying to imply I’m not willing - I totally am and really want - not that it’s just important that I want to, but -”

“Usually I’m the one talking in sentence fragments,” she cuts his anxious ramble off, grinning. Oliver rubs the back of his neck with an embarrassed smile. “And yes. My answer is yes.”

His heart soars, filled with hope. “Wait, really?”

She nods. Reaches her hand out for him to take. Oliver entwines their fingers, in utter awe that something he has been worrying over doing for a month now could have possibly been so easy. “You’re the first human who has actually seen me as a person, and not just somebody to be scared and wary of. You continually remind me I’m not a monster and humanize me. That means a hell of a lot. I like you, Oliver, and by that I mean I more than just like you.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” he says, his voice wavering. “Because I more than just like you too.”

Felicity’s grin widens into one of delight. “The fact I’m not human isn’t a deal-breaker for you?”

“I kind of thought you were out of my league, actually,” Oliver confesses. “Still think you are. I’m a college drop-out shipwreck survivor turned illegal vigilante archer, with a bucketload of trauma attached. You’re _you_.”

“Oliver, I eat the raccoons that live in and on the trash in the Foundry alleyway,” Felicity says dryly. “I’ve ingested god knows how many burned weed butts and rotting martini olives because of them, at this point. Trust me, there’s no league to be had. ”

“Can I please request you don’t eat any live animals when we go on our first date?”

“No promises.”

* * *

They decide to go on their first date after they take down the jewel-thief named ‘The Dodger’ together. Well, together is a very loose term. Felicity plans the trap they set using a Queen family brooch at the Starling City Cancer Society fundraising gala, claiming that the antiquity is the perfect bait as it’s a rare piece from the Ominous Decade.

“This isn’t how I usually do things,” Oliver mutters, as he walks the ballroom floor in a dapper tux, playing ex-castaway socialite Ollie Queen tonight rather than the Hood. Felicity is on his arm in a shimmering gold dress that he picked out for her when she told him earlier she was too busy constructing a micro-tracker to place on the brooch to go shopping.

“Pray tell, Oliver, how do you usually do things then?” Felicity snickers.

“Normally I just find the person and put the fear of god into them until they talk.”

“Yes, I’m aware,” she squeezes his forearm. “But _finding_ the Dodger is where we’re going to have the problem there, and this is the only way I could think of doing that.”

“And your plan is a good one,” he acquiesces. “I just hate having to pretend to be the spoiled, elitist kid I was before the island.”

“We’re all playing a part,” Felicity replies, but there’s a defeated tone to her voice that reminds him that out of the two of them, she’s the stellar actor having to constantly play human to avoid the wrath of society. It puts things into perspective. He can easily suck up an evening of this if she can cope with a lifetime of that.

“Not with each other,” he says softly.

She glances over at him and smiles.

When the Dodger arrives and attempts to swipe the brooch, Felicity effortlessly snags him by the wrists, walks him out of the room, and knocks him out. Oliver is amused when she tells him that the criminal attempted to place a bomb necklace on her but failed because she ‘accidentally’ broke his hand. Nobody messes with Felicity Smoak, the Starling City Leviathan, after all. The Dodger is tied up and delivered to SCPD with a dark green bow on his head, courtesy of the Arrow, and that’s the end of that.

Celebratory team cocktails commence afterward after they’ve changed into more suitable casual clothes, at a bar that Diggle knows the owner of. They get a bottomless margarita jug and it’s after they’ve refilled it twice that Oliver realizes that Diggle is trying to get Felicity drunk. She doesn’t seem to be affected by the alcohol at all, though, and when he casts her a curious look, she winks. Interesting, the archer muses, because if Leviathan can’t get drunk, that means Felicity really does enjoy red wine for the taste. Does that mean that she's only affected by drugs, and not alcohol at all?

Diggle eventually gives up and gets a taxi home, tipsy enough to hug both of them before departing. Oliver hasn’t drunk all that much as he’s grown to hate the feeling of being inebriated and out of control, so lets his partner finish the last of the margarita jug.

It’s a warm February evening with no clouds in the sky and a light breeze drifting through the city up from the Pacific. It’s because of the pleasant weather and the fact this might be the only evening they have free for a while, what with the Undertaking coming up, that Oliver shyly suggests they take their first date now, and go for a walk along the Northern beach. Felicity raises her eyebrows but beams at him, agreeing it would be nice to do something calm and away from the crowds.

Felicity drives them down to the shorefront in her Mini Cooper, reassuring him that her results on a breathalyzer if they get pulled over will be normal, as her lightning-fast metabolism breaks down alcohol the instant it enters her system. She dissolves into a fit of laughter when the archer has to hunch his entire body to squeeze into the tiny car, and knocks his head on the roof when clambering in and out. He doesn’t understand why she has such a small car, because as large as he reckons her true form is, it must be extremely cramped for her to be driving it.

Starling City’s beach isn’t exactly a _beach_ , and is more of a rocky shoreline that stretches down to the ocean’s edge. As such, there aren’t many stores catering to tourists except one small family-run icecream stall, which is closing up when they arrive. The woman manning the front of the store gushes over them when they ask if they can potentially buy some icecreams to enjoy on their evening walk, calling them an “adorable couple”. Oliver gets a vanilla and strawberry pot while Felicity chooses a scoop of mint chip and one of toffee fudge on a cone. The melted cream drips down onto her fingers but she’s so happy that the archer just chuckles and offers her a paper napkin.

Hand in hand, the two of them walk down to where pebbles turn to grey sand, just below the high tide mark. The sea waves crash and swash a few feet to their left as they stroll along together. Felicity’s sundress billows out because of the mild sea wind and it’s impossible for Oliver not to notice how she gravitates to the water, kicking off her shoes and holding them in her hand so the water can trickle over her toes as the waves rush up and down the sand. She looks utterly at peace with her hair free in the wind and a radiant smile on her face as she peers back at him, leading him by their joined hands, and she’s the most beautiful and stunning thing Oliver has ever seen.

“We’ve known each other for months, and we barely know anything about each other,” Felicity says, as she starts collecting shells. Oliver obliges her by offering to carry a few. “We should play twenty questions. Or, you know, a game with the same principle of swapping them.”

The archer remembers playing that with Thea before the Gambit. “That’s a good idea.”

“I won’t ask you anything about the island,” Felicity reassures him, taking his hesitance to answer as reluctance. “I promise.”

“No, it’s okay,” he smiles. “You can. I trust you. If I don’t feel comfortable enough to answer certain questions, I’ll tell you and you can ask something else. Are there any topics I should avoid asking you about? Your, uh -” He wiggles his fingers to try and make them look like tentacles.

Felicity sticks her tongue out at him but laughs. “You can ask me those questions,” she replies slowly. “Just be aware that I might not be able to answer some of them. Not because I don’t want to, but because I’m not supposed to.”

“Fair enough. Should I start?”

She nods, focused on a particularly pretty spiral shell, which she’s cleaning of sand and debris in the seawater. The way her brow furrows and she sticks her tongue out of the side of her mouth as she concentrates is utterly adorable.

“How and why did you choose your name?” The archer has been thinking about this a lot, actually. Felicity can’t be her true name. She must have picked it at some point.

Felicity quirks an eyebrow. “Bit of a heavy question to start with. I thought you were gonna start with something menial like ‘what’s your favorite color.’ It’s purple, by the way.” She doesn’t sound annoyed, just pensive. “Well, the word and name Felicity has two meanings. The first is happiness and luck, and the second is the ability to find appropriate expression for one's thoughts. Given who and what I am, I liked the idea of embodying the first meaning, and thought I should maybe try and strive for the second, given that I have a terrible brain-to-mouth filter.”

“The name Felicity suits you,” he tells her.

She stops, so she can jump up on her tip-toes and kiss his cheek softly. “Thank you. Do you want to hear my real name?”

Oliver stops in place and tilts his head at her curiously. “You would tell me that?”

“You won’t be able to pronounce it, anyway,” she shrugs, smiling. “We’re not really meant to tell people outside of our culture our names because names hold enormous power over us but the human tongue can’t make all the syllables of the Ancient Speak, so it’s impossible to use my name against me.”

“What is it, then?”

A series of sharp clicks with whistles and harmonic sounds flows from her mouth, making the archer’s head aches trying to comprehend it as a singular word, let alone her _name_. “It technically means ‘dappled sunlight through the sea fronds’... sunshine makes us happy because we don’t get to see it often, as we have to hide in deeper waters. Sunshine equals happiness… happiness equals Felicity. What does your name mean?”

The archer can’t help but be embarrassed. Her name is _stunning_ and magnificent and his… just isn’t. “I’m pretty certain Oliver just means ‘olive tree’. Very boring compared to yours.”

“No, it’s not,” Felicity argues. “The olive tree in the Hebrew bible symbolizes fruitfulness, beauty, and dignity. When you extend an olive branch, it traditionally signifies an offer of peace. And that’s just the Latin origin! Oliver derives from Olivier, which is the Norman-French variation of the Ancient Germanic name Alfher, or the Old Norse name Aleifr. Alfher means ‘elf warrior’ and I mean, you’re not an elf but you’re _definitely_ a warrior, and Aleifr means ‘father’s legacy’.” She shoots him a pointed look. “Which I think is very fitting considering that everything you’re doing here to save the city is to fulfill your dad’s dying wish.”

Oliver stares at her, a feeling of admiration streaking through him and making his chest feel suddenly tight. “How do you know all that?” he asks, amazed. “How many languages do you know?”

Felicity blushes beautifully. “Um. Quite a few.”

“C’mon, give me a number estimate.”

“... 27.”

_27?_ he mouths in disbelief and awe. Then, he’s struck with anxiety. “Wait, can you speak Russian?” Oliver mutters and swears under his breath in Russian a _lot_ in the Foundry and he’s only ever done that because he thought Felicity and Diggle couldn’t understand him.

Laughing, Felicity nods and teases, “I’ve never heard of the phrase ‘Чтоб у тебя хуй во лбу вырос’ before but I’ll be using it from now on.”

He groans, dropping his head into his hands. Giggling at his mortified expression, Felicity takes his hands and swings them between them. The other embarrassing thing, on top of being caught in his awful cursing habits, is that hearing her speak Russian perfectly is _doing_ something to him. Of all the things, Oliver is turned on by listening to a tiny blonde repeating his Russian insults. There’s something wrong with him.

“My turn? I’m not gonna ask your favorite color, I know it’s green.” She pauses for a moment to think. “Why a bow and not any other weapon?”

“It’s more disciplined,” Oliver answers, also needing to take a moment to think about his answer. “Guns are explosive and mostly destructive. All you’re doing is pulling the trigger. With a bow, I’m the one drawing back and releasing the arrow and I have complete control over that, down to the tension I cause in the bowstring. I need to maintain my fitness to order to sustain the muscles I require to have the physical strength to shoot. I feel like it’s a lot more intimate a relationship between my body and the bow. Learning how to wield one on the island is what taught me proper patience as well. It takes time to master a bow, while as anybody can pick up a gun and use it.”

Felicity’s impressed expression informs him that it’s a great answer. “When you put it like that, it makes me feel a little guilty that I’ve been laughing at the police calling you Nutbar Robin Hood in their reports.”

Oliver snorts. “Honestly I would rather they call me that than The Hood Guy.” He pokes her lightly in the shoulder blade. “Why Starling City?”

“Why not?” she shrugs. “You really should be asking why Cambridge and Boston, Massachusetts. I did actually attend MIT there, you know. I just wanted a change of scenery. Living in the Marianas Trench was so depressing. It’s insanely dark down there and the anglerfish are pesky annoying little mites. You could eat them but that had so many bones they weren’t worth the pain of spending hours picking them out of your teeth. Urgh, and my family, don’t even get me started on them.”

“There are more of you?” he asks, intrigued.

“It’s my turn to ask a question but I guess I can sort of answer that one by not really answering it, because I’m not allowed to. Our culture is very closed off and we’re not even meant to let humans know we exist. You and Diggle are my special exceptions because you help me stay safe and hidden here. There are… a decent number of us.” 

“Oh.” Oliver is slightly taken back. He watches Felicity carefully as she happily walks one foot after the other along the line where the wet sand turns dry, like a child playing a game. “I thought… you might be the only one. The Hebrew Bible only talks in the singular.”

“It does, but we’re actually a species,” she explains. “We’ve always thought that the Leviathan in the Bible was the drove’s Alpha.” When he squirms, she raises an eyebrow and asks, “Did you think that I was the Leviathan in the Bible?”

“No… maybe. So you’re not some kind of sea goddess?”

“Oh, no, I am,” she says breezily. “Absolutely. But that’s goddess with a small ‘g’, not a capital one. Big difference. We’re powerful and knowledgeable, but not omnipotent or omniscient like the Big One.” She pokes her finger up at the sky. “ARGUS are right to be terrified of me.”

Oliver’s breath catches in his throat. She knows that ARGUS is watching her… does that mean she knows about the file!? And that he and Diggle have read it? “Have they, er, made any threats?”

“Didn’t you read my file?” she questions confusedly, confirming that she does know about it. “You know they’re taking a hands-off approach. Probably better for them, really. I made sure not to show them too much of my power when they were threat assessing me but they were still shitting themselves.”

He has to wonder if Felicity knows that one of the agents who performed her threat assessment killed himself after the assignment. If she’s seen the file, then she most likely does. “They call you Cthulhu.”

“Ha! I know,” she snorts, wiggling her toes beneath the wet sand and looking thrilled when a sand roach runs over her foot. “They think that we are the aliens. We’re not - we came before the humans. We’re not a thriving population by any definition, but let’s just say that you lot have got the right idea to be afraid of deeper bodies of water.” Felicity pauses and then adds thoughtfully, “Although when it comes to the Bermuda Triangle, it’s not what’s in the ocean you should be worried about. The griffins get testy when you fly into their airspace.”

Oliver is still trying to wrap his head around the fact he’s on a date with a goddess. His stomach drops. “I’m sorry, _griffins?_ ”

“Now I’ve definitely said too much.” She prods him back, in the arm. “Can I ask you something personal?”

“I’ve asked you a load of personal questions, so go ahead.”

“Why… what made you want to be my friend?” Felicity’s gone still, frowning down at the water lapping at her feet. “You… you came back, after you first met me. I’m gonna be honest, I thought you were going to be like everybody else and run like hell the moment you left my office and never return. But you took me for coffee and then spent time with me and… everybody is terrified of me, and I could tell that you were, but you still wanted to be my friend. Why?”

Tears well up in Oliver’s eyes. It’s utterly heartbreaking that Felicity feels like she has to ask that question. Has she really been so alone since arriving on land to live a new life here, avoided and shunned by everybody around her, that she’s bewildered by the thought of somebody sticking around and actually befriending her.

“Because you’re a good person,” he replies, his voice slightly choked up. “And because even though I was scared, there was a part of me that knew you wouldn’t hurt me, and that I could trust you. You were kind to me, and patient and understanding, even though I was a stranger and asking you to look at a shady bullet-ridden laptop.” She cocks her head sideways, mulling this over. “Felicity, it’s not your fault people don’t want to be around you, it’s their problem. They can’t see past their fear and prejudices. Look at Diggle - he had a panic attack when he first met you and now he thinks of you as his little sister. Anybody would be lucky to call you their friend. Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise.”

Felicity turns out so fast that she’s a blur in Oliver’s vision and then she’s hugging him so tightly his bones creak. “Thank you.”

“Hey.” He pulls back from her to cup her face, telling her seriously, “You don’t _ever_ have to thank me for being a decent human being, okay? I’m ashamed of the other examples of my species if all they’ve treated you with is contempt and suspicion. You don’t deserve to be treated like that.”

“Sometimes I think I do,” she sighs. “You get used to that sort of behavior from the people around you after a while, you know? You start to think its normal, and that if it’s normal, you deserve it. I hate scaring people with my existence but it’s not like I can help it.”

“That is _not_ your fault,” he says fiercely, because he can hear the guilt in her voice. “And whether they are scared of you or not, they have _no right_ to treat you that way. Don’t ever think you have to accept it. You don’t. Okay?”

“Okay.”

The serious moment over, Felicity entwines their fingers and tries to urge him to join her in stepping into the sea. Oliver gets close enough that the waves wash up to just in front of his toes, but decides he would rather keep his feet and shoes dry. Pouting, she’s forced to release their hands so she can hop one foot at a time into the surf.

Bending down, Felicity scoops up a small crab. Oliver jolts in alarm for a second, thinking she might eat it, but instead, she allows the small creature to pince at her fingertips before she releases it. “What did you eat on the island?”

“Everything you can ask me, and that’s what you want to know?” he chuckles. “Basically everything I could find that was edible. Lian Yu is desolate and doesn’t have much wildlife. Seabirds, bats, wild pigs, weasels, but mostly fish and shellfish. Insects, if I was desperate.”

“So… you’d probably hate it if I asked you to get sushi with me some time?” Felicity sighs.

“I’ve had one too many bad experiences with raw fish before, but you could probably convince me on California rolls. I know it’s rude to ask a woman how old they are, but I feel like given that I sort of suspect you might be immortal, it might be okay.”

“Not as old as you might think.” She’s up to her ankles in the ocean now, unbothered by the freezing water. “We don’t really keep track of birthdays, but I know I was born the same year as Galileo.” At his blank expression, she blushes and mutters, “1564.”

“You -” Oliver’s words die in his mouth. His throat thickens. “You’re 449 years old?” 

“No, I’m 448. Galileo’s birthday is February 15th and mine is July 24th. Well, I _think_ it is.” She looks worried. “Does that bother you?”

Honestly, Oliver thought she might be a lot older than that, but he doesn’t say that. “No.” Felicity eyes him dubiously. “I thought you were gonna say you remember Jesus being born.”

“Oliver!” she shoves him with a playful scowl. “I’m not _that_ old! Be careful and don’t push my buttons, I could crush you!”

“Because of your strength or your size?”

“Yes!”

He picks her up by the waist and easily slings her over his shoulder. Felicity shrieks and giggles as Oliver twirls around, spinning her, before dropping her back to her feet. He measures her height up to his clavicle. “Don’t seem that big to me.”

Felicity pouts. “I’ll have you know my true form is at least _five_ times taller than you! I’m only short in this form because I want to be! It makes me seem less threatening. My true form still bleeds through though which confuses the human brain and triggers threat sensors. There’s no way I can shield humans from my presence when it’s so huge.”

“I was wondering why that was,” Oliver responds. “So it’s just the case of us being able to sense that you’re a lot larger and dangerous beneath the surface?” She hums in acknowledgment. The archer can’t resist the urge to jab, “When you say five times taller than me, is that five times taller with a tentacle extended, or -?”

She knocks him onto his back on the sand and winds him, climbing on top of him and sitting on his waist. “You are very obsessed with my tentacles, Mr Queen, are you _sure_ you don’t have a fetish?”

“I haven’t even seen them, so I don’t know if I can be sure,” he grins up at her, leaning on his elbows. He doesn’t care that the cold, wet seawater is seeping from the sand into his pants and shirt. Eyes darting across her face and down to her lips, which are painted a bright fuschia today, he asks, “Can I kiss you?”

“I don’t know, can you?” Felicity tilts her head.

He can. And he does. Oliver sits up and wraps an arm around the blonde’s waist, bending down to brush his lips to hers tentatively. It’s a gentle first kiss, warm and sweet, and full of hope for the future. Oliver doesn’t know what he expected, maybe for her to taste like the sea which would, in all honestly, be quite unpleasant, but instead, she tastes like mint and fudge from her icecream. Felicity tangles her fingers in his shirt collar as she pulls him down further to deepen the kiss, her entire body vibrating at his touch.

When they break apart, their eyes slowly open and meet, and they stare at each other for a couple of seconds before smiling brilliantly. Felicity snuggles up into his chest and hugs him contently while Oliver props his chin on top of her head and possessively encases her in his arms, finally able to consider her _his_ and him as hers.

“I love you,” she mumbles into his shirt.

His heart flutters with joy. He tightens his arms around her. “I love you too.”

“How is this going to work?” she asks, suddenly sounding small. “We’re not the same species… we’re nowhere near similar ages, I only _look_ human -”

“Let’s just take it one step at a time, okay?” Oliver cuts her off gently, rubbing his hand down her spine. “We’re both sentient beings with the capacity for emotion. Screw humanity and society’s norms. We know that we both care about each other a lot, we know we love each other. That’s all that should really matter, right?”

“Right.” Felicity runs her fingers through his hair. “You’ve got wet sand clumped at the back,” she tells him with an amused grin.

“I’ve got wet sand everywhere,” he smirks. “So do you. You’ll have to wash off your feet before we get into the car.”

“Did you choose the beach just for me?” She caresses her thumb over his cheek in a tender gesture, her seafoam eyes brighter than usual. “Because you knew I would like it?”

“Do I get boyfriend brownie points if I say yes?”

She lights up. “I get to call you my boyfriend now?”

“Only if I get to call you my girlfriend.”

“Deal.” They awkwardly shake hands between them, and once they do, Oliver supports her back and begins to stand, with her legs still wrapped around his waist. Felicity desperately clutches at him and circles his neck with her arms, thighs clenching his hips. “Careful, careful! Don’t drop me!”

“Never,” he swears, and gently eases her back down onto her feet. Picking up her abandoned shoes, he slips his hand into his. “Come on, it’s probably time we go. The wind’s picking up and I think a storm might be coming in tonight.”

“It is,” Felicity nods, peering out over the vast open water. Her eyes are suddenly alight with something ethereal. “It’ll be a charged one, so there’ll be lightning as well.” She drags her hair back into a ponytail with a hair tie that Oliver passes to her, as he’s started keeping one on hand for her. “Tomorrow will be a great day to go swimming.”

On their walk back to Felicity’s car, they pass another couple who are walking their dog.

Felicity catches sight of the golden retriever puppy and yanks on Oliver’s arm, pointing it out excitedly. “Ooh, look, a snack!”

All the blood drains from Oliver’s face. A second later, Felicity is howling with laughter at his mortified and shocked expression.

* * *

When Diggle gets mild appendicitis a week after their first date and has to take a few days off Team Vigilante duties to recover, Felicity offers to eat the diseased organ for him.

“... I’m sorry, what?” Diggle deadpans.

She tilts her head at him, confused. “Is the appendicitis affecting your hearing?”

“No. I - you just have to explain that to me, because it sounds like you want to tear one of my organs out of my body for a snack.”

Felicity reassures him that she doesn’t even need to cut him open, as she’s not limited to this dimensional plane and can simply reach into his body and pluck it out. The two of them are on much better terms now, closer friends than ever before, since Diggle apologized to her for his initial reaction and how he might have hurt her feelings. This, though… well, there are some boundaries even best friends don’t cross, and suggesting to use dimensional powers to literally fish an organ out of him to _eat_ …

Diggle stares at her alarmedly for a good few minutes before saying in a cracked voice, “Thanks, Felicity, but I… don’t think that will be necessary. I don’t need surgery and the hospital has given me anti-inflammatory meds and antibiotics instead. It is a… very kind offer though, so I appreciate it?”

“Are you sure?” she presses.

“I’m sure.”

When Diggle is about to head home a few hours later to get bed rest, Felicity offers once again, sounding very overeager, “Offer is totally still on the table for eating your appendix! It’s a useless organ and it would be way better if it was out of you sooner rather than later, given how appendicitis can recur!”

“Felicity, once again, thank you - but I kinda wanna keep my appendix right now,” Diggle replies, in as steady a voice as he can muster.

“But it’s _diseased!_ ”

“Yeah and I - I wanna keep it.” Diggle looks so uncomfortable. To be fair to him, Oliver isn’t sure he would want Felicity sticking her fingers into his body via a different dimension to take out one of his organs either, especially not to consume it. He would never be able to look at her the same way again. Making his hasty exit, Diggle tells them he’ll keep them updated to his medical condition.

Oliver can tell his girlfriend is a little disappointed she wasn’t able to convince him.

That evening, he goes to the Queen family’s butcher, buys a 16-ounce steak, and cooks it rare for Felicity at her apartment. He serves it with a plate of potato smiley faces and a glass of the Château Lafite-Rothschild 1982 they didn’t finish completely during their Narnia movie night. 

Felicity dramatically declares her undying love for him that night.

* * *

Two weeks later, the world turns upside down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **next time** : the undertaking arrives. oliver and felicity infiltrate merlyn global. the team attempts to dismantle the markov devices. merlyn is finally confronted.
> 
> really hope you enjoyed this second chapter. once again, i would LOVE it if you guys could leave kudos and comment to tell me your thoughts xx
> 
> twitter: @lexiblackbriar  
> tumblr: @alexiablackbriar13


	3. part 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here we are with the final part!!! thank you for sticking with me through this whole fic, as weird and wacky as its been!! its been wonderful hearing how you guys have fallen in love with puppy!leviathan!felicity just as much as i have.
> 
> final thanks to bev (@felicityollies) who this fic is dedicated to for being such an incredible friend, sam (@ghostfoxlovely) for reading over. shout-outs specially go to calli, shel, cerys, abby, bev, mandy and lettie for being so supportive over on twitter
> 
>  **Trigger Warnings:** there are discussions and descriptions of non-human entities consuming both animals and humans in this fic. there are also descriptions of injuries and discussion of terrorism, murder etc, standard arrow stuff

It’s an early morning at the beginning of March, and Oliver is moving another duffel bag’s worth of clothes over to Felicity’s apartment. Since their date, he’s been spending more and more time over at her place - so much so that he’s basically moved in at this point, and she’s offered him a drawer. It’s a first for him. Never this early in a relationship has he considered moving into his partner’s home, and never has he felt so comfortable about it.

Oliver’s hastily making his escape from the Queen mansion, about to clamber into the black sedan Diggle is waiting in, when he hears his mother shout his name from the porch. Wincing, he glances over at her, fully expecting her to begin lecturing him, but is astonished to see that her face is drawn with fatigue and worry, tears in her eyes. He’s never seen Moira look this distressed before and it’s disconcerting.

“I need to talk to you,” she whispers, wringing her hands anxiously as she rushes up to him. “Urgently.”

“Is it Thea?” he asks immediately. His little sister is on antidepressants and attending therapy, and has been cold turkey for over a month, but Oliver is starkly aware that there’s a risk of relapse is still high for her.

“No, no, your sister is - she’s fine. It’s - it’s something else.”

“Now’s not really the time, Mom,” he says apologetically. He freezes when his mother grabs his wrist, tugging on it insistingly. “Mom…”

“ _Please_ , Oliver,” she begs. “I - I know about your green secret.” His eyes widen and he takes a staggering step back. “And I need your help, you might be the only person who can stop him… Malcolm is moving the Undertaking up to _tonight_. He told me before he was going to evacuate the Glades before setting it off but he _isn’t!_ He’s going to kill millions of people. Please, _please_ , you need to stop him. I can help, I can give you information!”

He sets his expression into one of calm resolve. Wrenching his arm out of her grasp, he firmly takes his mother by the shoulders and guides her down into the sedan’s back seat, sliding it alongside her and slamming the door closed. “What do you mean, it’s tonight?” Oliver demands. “What _is_ the Undertaking, how is he going to kill millions of people?” He shoots Diggle a forceful look. The bodyguard nods and pulls his one out, calling Felicity. They’ll need her on the line listening to this.

“Malcolm knows that Walter and Miss Smoak have been investigating him, and knows that the Vigilante is involved,” Moira says shakily. “He was furious when his men failed to kidnap Walter and then kidnapped Miss Smoak, but vanished before bringing her to him. Last night, he was - he got drunk and he was angry. He was yelling down the phone to me that he can’t afford to have his plans thwarted after half a decade of planning. He says the Undertaking will begin tonight, at 9pm, and that nobody in the Glades deserves to be saved.”

“Felicity’s here,” Diggle tells them, placing his phone down on the divider between the front and the backseats. “You’re on speakerphone, Felicity.”

Pale and trembling, Moira mutters, “Of course she’s working for you, I should have known -”

“Working _with_ me,” Oliver corrects sharply. “Mom, you need to actually explain what Merlyn is going to do.”

“Malcolm had me use Queen Consolidated to buy Unidac Industries last year. They’re a developmental technology company that specializes in seismic infringement. They’ve created something called the Markov Device - it’s meant to tap into seismic energy created by earthquakes and convert it into electrical energy, as an alternative energy source.” Moira puts her head in her hands, looking ashamed. “Malcolm knew it could be converted into a weapon by reversing it… if a large enough energy input is directed into the device, it can trigger an earthquake. He forced me to fund the project so he can use it to destroy the Glades.”

“Why the Glades?” Diggle prompts.

“Merlyn’s wife Rebecca was murdered there,” Oliver answers for his mother, clenching his jaw. “He’s trying to get revenge for her.”

“The device will have to be placed underground,” Felicity pipes up. “Most likely in a sewer or in the abandoned underground tunnels that used to be the train network.” She pauses and then adds gravely, “I just looked into Unidac Industries - they were attacked last night. Four scientists working on the Markov project were killed and two devices were stolen. They found black arrows at the scene. Merlyn must have sent the Dark Archer to make sure that the machines can’t be traced back to Queen Consolidated or him.”

“No, Malcolm _is_ the Dark Archer,” Moira informs them.

Oliver closes his eyes, exhaling heavily. Right, yes, of course. Which means that it was Merlyn who beat the hell out of him at Christmas. He would love to get his hands around that man’s throat but at the moment, he needs to concentrate on the more immediate problem. “And he’s going to use the two devices tonight. Felicity, what level of destruction are we talking about here?”

“Each device could decimate at least a twenty block radius. The buildings in the Glades are run-down and none of them are earthquake-proofed. They’ll topple like Jenga.” It’s an extremely grim image. A tense silence falls between them. Felicity breaks it by saying in a more positive voice, “If I get my hands on the device schematics, though, I might be able to deactivate them before Merlyn is able to set them off. Moira, I’m assuming he’s using a remote detonator? At the least, I’ll be able to cut that connection.”

A glint of hope appears in his mother’s eyes, and Oliver reckons the same has appeared in his own. It’s a chance, a small possibility they can stop the destruction before it occurs. “Malcolm will have copies of the schematics on his personal server. You’ll only be able to access them from his penthouse at Merlyn Global. It will be extremely difficult to break into. There’s no access from the roof and two separate elevators to get up there - a private one up to the penthouse itself that requires a keycard and a biometric scan.”

That sounds impossible to deal with, but Oliver has been dealing with the impossible for the last five years, and even more so in the last five months since he met one Felicity Smoak. “Felicity, is there a way we can bypass that?”

“I’m looking up the building blueprints now,” she replies, voice sounding far away, which indicates that she’s deep in thought and focused, probably on her screen. “I think I’ve figured out a way for us to get in. Oliver, you should bring your mother here to the Foundry. Maybe your sister too, actually. I earthquake-proofed the place back before Christmas just in case I lose control of my true form. If not here, then outside the city.”

“I should turn myself over to the police,” Moira says morosely. “I’ve been conspiring with a murderer to commit a terrorist plot.”

“Under duress. You’re more valuable to us here, Moira, rather than in police custody,” Felicity responds firmly. “We know we can keep you safe from Merlyn. We don’t know if the SCPD can.”

They formulate an action plan. Oliver and Diggle will bring Moira with them to the Foundry and they’ll go over what they need to do to infiltrate Merlyn Global and get the Markov Device schematics. While Oliver and Felicity carry out the mission, Diggle will move his sister-in-law and nephew out of the city and then track down Thea, Walter, and Tommy to make sure they’re safe, bringing them to the Foundry if he can’t get them on a train away from the chaos. Since Merlyn has been threatening Moira using Thea, Walter, and Oliver, it’s vital to ensure her husband and daughter are secure. Tommy as Malcolm’s son is equally as vulnerable.

If Oliver and Felicity don’t have the schematics by 2pm, the Vigilante will contact Detective Lance telling him about the need to evacuate the Glades immediately. Moira is willing to call an emergency press conference and address the city on the news if required, not caring about incriminating herself. If they do have the schematics, they’ll still enlist Lance’s help in combing the sewers and abandoned tunnels for the Markov devices, as Moira tells them they’ll have been drilled into place this morning. Hopefully, Felicity will then be able to shut the machines down. If she can’t, they’ll issue the evacuation order.

Moira is astounded when she arrives at the Foundry, staring around in amazement and trailing her fingers over the weapons countertop, touching her fingertips to her son’s arrows. Oliver’s attention instantly turns to Felicity. His girlfriend is flitting anxiously behind her computer set-up, watching his mother with a nervous expression. She hasn’t got a shadow at all, probably because she’s pulling it in, in an effort to appear less threatening. Remembering what Felicity said on their first date about his mother, Oliver reaches out a hand to her encouragingly. She swallows and takes it, using the archer’s body as a partial shield as she hugs herself to his waist.

Moira pales to the point where she looks as if she’s about to pass out when she sees Felicity. It’s not screaming or attacking her or calling the police as his girlfriend predicted, but it’s still a pretty extreme reaction. She hangs back near the staircase, refusing to come any closer; the horror in her face as her eyes flit back and forth between the two of them indicate how distressed she is at seeing her son so close to the blonde.

“Mom, you remember Felicity?” Oliver says gently. “She’s my partner and my girlfriend.”

“She was -” his mother starts, voice trembling with fear. “She was in my office -”

“- When I broke in to interrogate you,” the archer interrupts. “Yes, I know. Felicity was there to keep me safe.”

Her eyes widen. “I shot you.”

“You shot _at_ me,” he corrects. “You didn’t hit me. Felicity stopped the bullet.”

Moira gulps nervously and finally looks directly at Felicity again, instinctively flinching. Oliver can feel how tense his girlfriend is as she cuddles up to him. “I’m sorry if I scared you,” Felicity murmurs. “I was trying to protect Oliver, and I, er, went a little over the top…”

“What are you?” Moira asks. It’s exactly the same question she asked Felicity when first meeting her in the Queen mansion before Christmas, except this time, she sounds less scandalized and more... wary.

And this time, Felicity gives her an answer. Swiping Oliver’s Hebrew bible she gave him for Christmas from where it’s lying on the medical table, she flips to the correct page and passes it over to Moira. “This might give you a faint idea…” She pauses and adds insistently, “You should know that this passage has been _massively_ misinterpreted through the centuries, though.” 

“Oh,” Moira mouths, once she’s read the circled paragraph. She’s still now, no longer shaking, but there’s a haunted darkness in her eyes instead of terror. When she raises her gaze, it’s piercing. “Why are you here?”

“Because I want to be. I wanted an education and a job and to attempt to live a normal life. And because Oliver was my first friend and I fell in love with him, and he’s made me want to stay.”

“You love my son?”

“More than anything and anybody else on this earth,” Felicity replies honestly.

Moira nods tearfully and then, to everybody’s utter shock, she steps forward and draws the younger blonde into a hug. “Please make sure he survives if he has to face off against Malcolm. I can’t lose my son again.”

Felicity embraces her back, meeting Oliver’s eyes over Moira’s shoulder. Steely and determined, she responds, “I’ll protect him with my life if I have to.”

* * *

Oliver and Felicity head to Merlyn Global together. They take the black sedan and park a few blocks away so they can go over their plan and Felicity can change into her disguise - a Big Belly Burger delivery girl. Oliver has to admit that he’s a little nervous. It’s not because Felicity hasn’t done undercover work before - she’s been undercover all of her life, essentially - but it’s because there’s a possibility Merlyn could interrupt their mission. Moira has him pegged to be in a meeting with the CTO of Queen Consolidated right now on a tech collaboration the companies are doing so he shouldn’t be present in the building, but there’s always a chance things could change.

Oliver watches from the side anxiously as Felicity approaches Merlyn Global’s reception desk, having waited until they’re absolutely swamped with people before going up. Because there are so many people vying for the receptionist’s attention, she hands over a basic access pass for Felicity that will get her into the employee elevator without bothering to call up to ask the relevant people if they’re expecting a food delivery.

The archer quickly joins her to wait for the elevator to come down and makes sure not to make eye contact with her or pay attention to her as they step inside, as to pretend they don’t know each other.

Pressing the close doors button frantically, the archer rolls his eyes when a man manages to slip inside. He jolts at the sight of Felicity... but also gives off instant desperate creeper vibes. “Where you heading, sweetheart?” he flirts with Felicity.

“19th floor,” she answers flatly.

The guy smirks. “Too bad, I’m going to 13.”

Annoyed at his blatant flirting with his girlfriend, Oliver subtly shoves the man’s files out of his arms, sending them toppling to the floor outside the elevator. He curses and stumbles out to grab his scattered paperwork. The doors shut behind him, leaving Oliver and Felicity alone.

“Possessive much?” he thinks he hears Felicity mumbles amusedly under her breath.

Oliver quickly taps his comm to open the line to Diggle, making sure that it looks like he’s just scratching. “I didn’t know you guys delivered here,” he says loudly. Diggle will be shutting down the elevator remotely and cutting the CCTV, making it look like a malfunction, as soon as they reach the 24th floor - one floor below where the penthouse elevator is located.

Felicity shoots him a look. “There’s no audio recording equipment in here, we’re good.”

“You can never be sure.”

The elevator jolts to a stop, between the 24th and 25th floors.

“CCTV is down,” Diggle reports. “You’re good to go.”

Oliver quirks an eyebrow at his girlfriend and drops to one knee. “This isn’t the way I imagined I would be doing this for the first time in front of you.”

“Next time there better be a ring box in your hand,” she teases him, using his shoulders to balance as she steps up onto his bent leg to use it as a step, so she can reach the ceiling of the elevator. There are probably more efficient ways to do this.

Oliver steadies her with his hands on her hips as she pushes open the emergency latch. “Careful, Felicity.”

Before he can offer to help her up, she’s effortlessly hoisting herself through the hole. She sends a cheeky grin back down at him. “Need some help getting it up, honey?”

“Never, when I’m around you,” he throws back, lifting himself through the hole as well. 

Now standing on top of the elevator in the shaft itself, it’s clear to see that there’s another shaft, for the private penthouse elevator, five feet to the left and one floor up from them. The elevator is stopped on the 25th floor and they know it won’t be heading up anytime soon, with Malcolm out of the building, so if they get on top of it, it’s a straight shot up to the penthouse. Thankfully, there’s a clear path to it.

“Crossbow, please, my love.”

Felicity drops the delivery back she’s carrying, opening it up to reveal the mini crossbow that Oliver has snuck inside. The archer picks it out and loads a grappling hook arrow and inches to the edge so he can fire the arrow directly into a structural beam above where they need to land, on the top of the penthouse elevator. He tugs the line to ensure it’s secure. Now all they need to do is reel themselves up.

“Um, Oliver?”

He glances back at Felicity. “Yeah?”

She shuffles anxiously. “Now might not be the best time to mention this, but I’m _really_ scared of heights.”

He jerks in surprise. Of all the phobias Felicity could have… she’s terrified of _heights_ of all things? “Are you serious?”

“Look, there aren’t really heights in the ocean, okay?” she says defensively, pouting. “Well there are, but - you can’t _fall_ off them, you sink, and I’m a great swimmer so that was never an issue for me!”

“Don’t look down.”

“Too late.” She’s trembling, peering down at the huge drop below them.

Oliver shakes his head and extends a hand to her. “It’s okay.” When Felicity hesitantly takes it, she yelps when he yanks her in close to his side, wrapping his free arm around her waist tightly. “I won’t let you fall, I promise. Hold onto me tight.”

Doing as he says, Felicity encircles his neck with her own arms, like a koala latching onto him. “I imagined you saying that under different circumstances.”

Oliver bursts out laughing. That might be one of her best innuendos. “Very non-platonic circumstances, I’m guessing,” he winks.

Diggle clears his throat, making them both flush in embarrassment. “Open line, guys, please keep it professional mission chatter only. Especially considering we have a _guest_ listening in.”

“Oh, let them flirt, Mr Diggle, they’re not hurting anybody,” they hear Moira reply, to their further mortification.

“Sorry Dig, sorry Mom,” Oliver says sheepishly. He turns to Felicity. “Ready?”

“As I’ll ever be.”

They reel in the line and the two of them fly up. Once they’re on top of the penthouse elevator, Oliver nocks a new grappling arrow and shoots up to the top of that elevator shaft. Within a couple of shaky minutes, they’re forcing the penthouse elevator doors open and slipping inside. Diggle has already used Felicity’s code to disable the security up here; they can’t contact him, however, as the walls are made of some material that blocks the comms devices. They take a moment to catch their breaths and then head silently through the apartment-like office suite.

Felicity slides behind the desktop, beginning to hack in. She’s bought a thumb drive with her in her pocket with all of her best infiltration programs and algorithms, so she doesn’t need to work long. Assured that she can protect herself and doesn’t need watching over as she fulfills her task, Oliver keeps his crossbow on hand and begins venturing around the penthouse, investigating. He doesn’t know what he’s looking for, but maybe there’s something here he can find that incriminates Merlyn as the Dark Archer.

He pokes his head inside a small bedroom and is about to give up on his search when out of the corner of his eye, he sees a shoe sticking out on the floor. Heart in his throat, she rushes into the bedroom.

He’s stunned and horrified to find Tommy unconscious on the floor, curled up beside the bed. His breathing is incredibly slow and although he has no injuries, it’s clear his sleep isn’t natural. Oliver raises his voice and shouts for Felicity.

Felicity skids into the room, looking panicked, and her alarm quickly turns to outrage and concern as she hovers over Tommy, checking his pulse and raising his eyelids to examine his pupils. When she turns him over into the recovery position, Oliver swiftly spots a red irritated mark on his neck that’s beginning to bruise up.

“What is that?” he asks, confused.

“An injection site. Have you got your penknife on you?” Felicity asks abruptly.

He’s bemused why she would ask, but hands it over. Felicity pricks Tommy’s finger and then, wiping a drop of blood from the tiny wound with her thumb, sticks her digit into her mouth. Oliver’s eyes blow wide, taken back. Is she tasting his blood? Is she able to taste if he’s been given drugs or something? That’s new, and potentially very useful.

“He’s been given a sedative, a powerful one,” Felicity says gravely. “He could be asleep for days.”

“We have to get him out of here to the Foundry.”

“We can’t, without waking him up,” she sighs. “People are definitely going to ask questions if Oliver Queen walks out of Merlyn Global with an unconscious Tommy Merlyn in a fireman’s carry over his shoulders.” She furrows her brow thoughtfully and then digs around in her jacket pocket. Eventually, she pulls out a tiny plastic vial that's filled with a black liquid. “I have an idea, but you might think it’s a stupid one.”

“None of your ideas are ever stupid,” Oliver reassures her.

“Well, most snake and scorpion hemotoxic venoms cause a massive decrease in heart rate and blood pressure by triggering the formation of clots. Neurotoxic venoms attack the nervous system by stopping communication between neurons via synapses. My venom is completely different. Instead of shutting down the cardiovascular and nervous systems, it speeds them up. Usually to the point where the heart is under so much stress it gives out, and the overwhelmed nervous system causes my prey to pass out or their brain to undergo rapid seizures.”

“... Right.” He doesn’t understand where this could be going, but he listens nevertheless.

“But, if I give Tommy a very small dose of my venom now, while he’s in this state… it could trigger his metabolism to speed up and break the sedative down rapidly, and increase his heart rate and nervous function enough so he’s forced to wake up.” She shakes the black liquid vial. “This is my own antivenom. I always keep a small vial on hand just in case I - well.” Felicity blushes. “It sounds ridiculous to say ‘accidentally envenomate somebody’, but it’s happened before. If I inject this into him before he’s put under too much stress by my venom, he’ll be absolutely fine.”

He stares at her. “But if we don’t do it in time, his heart and nervous system will overload and he could die?”

“... yes,” she admits guiltily. “But that’s only if we mess up the timing and I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen! It’s up to you, Oliver. He’s your friend. Do you want to risk it? We could just call 911 anonymously and say he’s unconscious and drugged up here.”

Oliver knows that Merlyn is Tommy’s emergency contact, so there’s no way they can call the police and an ambulance for him. They can’t leave Tommy here either, in case Merlyn comes back or god forbid, Tommy vomits in his sleep and chokes to death. Felicity says that it’s his call, but there really is only one call they can make. “Check the bathroom cabinets for a first aid kid,” he says. “There should be one that’s decked out with the equipment we need to create a make-shift syringe to inject him with your antivenom when we need to.”

Felicity nods, squeezing his shoulder on her way out of the bedroom. Oliver gets Tommy situated comfortably on his back on the bed, propped up on the pillows. When the blonde returns, it's with an incredulous expression and a huge medical kit that is basically a mini hospital in a to-go bag. They don’t need to end up making improvised syringes because there are some individually wrapped at the bottom of the kit. Once they have the antivenom ready to go, and a hand-held portable ECG set up so they can monitor Tommy’s vitals, Felicity asks Oliver to turn around.

“Why?” he asks, confused.

“Because when a girl is about to make venomous spikes appear out of her fingertips, she doesn’t want her boyfriend to see, okay?” she replies, sounding self-conscious.

“Oh. I thought you were going to bite him.”

“Oliver, not all creatures administer their venom through bites. You can look back now.”

He does, thinking that she did it rather fast. There’s a small red pockmark that’s already healed in the crook of Tommy’s left elbow. Within less than a minute, his heart rate and blood pressure begin to rise and he’s stirring woozily. It doesn’t take long for them to start increasing to a point of concern, though, so Felicity hastily grabs the antivenom syringe and injects it into Tommy’s neck. His vitals stabilize over the next few minutes. 

“Is he okay?” Oliver asks his girlfriend anxiously.

She nods wordlessly, motioning down at him.

Tommy tosses his head to the side with a groan, eyelids fluttering as he begins to wake up. “Oliver?” he mutters.

“Hey, buddy,” the archer greets him, relieved. “Take it slow, okay?”

Tommy manages to sit up with Oliver’s help. Felicity vanishes out of the bedroom, probably to continue her hack. It’s probably better she isn’t here anyway, Oliver thinks with a wince, as Tommy’s instinctive reaction to her presence the last time they met, which was also the first time, was not all that great. 

“Do you remember what happened to you?” Oliver prompts his friend gently.

“My dad,” Tommy replies, dazed. “I came… to talk to him about why he shut down Mom’s medical clinic in the Glades… he just lost it at me… started screaming about how everybody in the Glades deserves to die and they’re gonna get what’s coming to them.” His face turns ashen. “Something about an… earthquake machine. And I called him a psycho and was gonna call the police but he… he attacked me and stuck a needle in -” He reaches up and touches the tender place on his neck, where he was injected with the sedative by his father. Tommy begins hyperventilating. “Oh god, Oliver, is it true? Is he gonna set off an earthquake machine in the Glades and kill everybody!?”

Oliver presses his hands into Tommy’s shoulders to ground him and says in a steady but serious voice, “Tommy. Look at me.” His friend does so, his eyes wild with fright. “Yes, your dad is going to try and set off an earthquake machine. Two of them, actually, from what we understand. My mom has been working with him but she came to me today and admitted everything. There _is_ a way we can stop him. That’s what Felicity and I are doing here. We’re finding the machine schematics so she can figure out a way to dismantle them.”

“How could _you_ possibly stop him?” Tommy asks hysterically. “My father, he’s a maniac, Oliver! If he’s set all of this up, there’s no telling what else he could do - he could try and kill you!”

“That’s not going to happen.”

The two men glance over to the doorway, where Felicity is standing with an undaunted expression on her face and a resolute glint in her eyes. Tommy instantly recoils upon seeing her, his survival instincts kicking it and registering her existence as wrong. When Oliver slides off the bed to stand, he drags his friend to his feet alongside him, in front of his girlfriend.

“How do you know?” Tommy grits out.

Felicity quirks an eyebrow at Oliver and tilts her head towards the man.

“Because I’m the vigilante,” Oliver admits.

Tommy’s mouth drops open in shock, and he stares at Oliver as if he’s an absolute stranger to him. After a couple of strained seconds though, his friend shakes his head and looks at the archer with something more akin to wonder. It’s entirely what Oliver did not expect - he was honestly thinking that Tommy was going to spit on him in disgust and call him a murderer. “You… you’re the Hood guy?”

“He is,” Felicity confirms. “And he’s fought your father before, as the Dark Archer. It was a draw back then.” Oliver’s brow creases in uncertainty. He’s pretty certain he lost, actually. “Oliver was badly injured, but he survived.”

“Was that what happened at Christmas, when you ended up in hospital?” Tommy questions, bewildered. “But… you said it was a motorcycle accident.”

“I lied,” Oliver says simply. “I do that a lot, actually.”

“Not as much as I do,” Felicity reminds him softly. “Tommy, the difference is that Oliver fought your father alone back then. Now, he has me. I’m stepping out onto the battlefield alongside him and if Oliver faces Malcolm again in a fight, I’m going to be fighting too.” Her shadows grow, swelling in size and filling the doorway with darkness, and she makes her eyes glow eerily. Tommy doesn’t flinch this time, but just gulps in fear. “We’ll stop your father, Tommy. But right now, you need to come with us. We have somewhere safe where you can hide out until this is over, and you’ll have Moira for company - probably Thea and Walter too. Will you come with us?”

“You can keep me safe from my dad?” Tommy asks, in a small voice.

Felicity nods reassuringly.

“How? He’s a maniac, he’s not going to be scared of you.”

“He hasn’t met me yet,” she smiles toothily. It’s probably meant to be innocent and sweet but instead, Oliver gets struck with _TOO MANY TEETH_ once again and it comes across as vaguely threatening.

Tommy swallows. “Okay. Let’s go.”

It’s incredibly easier to break out from Merlyn Global than break in, as Tommy has a proper access card that allows them to use the penthouse elevator and the normal employee one. They escape from the building uncontested and quickly return back to the Foundry so Felicity can start examining the schematics she’s downloaded onto her USB drive. Moira greets them in relief and sobs at the sight of Tommy, whose adrenalin from his envenomation has faded, leaving him exhausted and dejected.

“These devices are complicated,” Felicity says, troubled. She’s changed into simple black leggings and a dark purple top, with a black leather jacket and sneakers; something practical she can run and fight in. Striding over from where he’s been busy Hooding up, Oliver leans over her shoulder, brushing a sympathetic and supportive kiss to the side of her head. “It could take me hours to dismantle each one alone. If I’m going to do this, I’m going to need a second set of hands - and we’re going to have to dismantle both of them at the same time.”

“You need three other people to help you,” Oliver translates. He casts a look back at his mother and Tommy, who are sitting on stools by the medical table, talking quietly. “I don’t want them out in the field.”

“I think I’m going to need Detective Lance to be a little more hands-on with this one,” she tells him. “And we’re going to need Dig.”

Their partner left shortly after they completed the mission at Merlyn Global, to move his sister-in-law and nephew out of the city and then track down Thea. “Mom, any update on Diggle?” he calls. Moira has been keeping tabs on the bodyguard for him.

“He’s managed to get Carly and AJ onto a train that left for Central City six minutes ago,” Moira replies. “He’s picked up Walter from QC and he’s gone to look for Thea now. I’ve given him a list of locations he should search. My gut feeling is that she’s at her new friend Roy Harper’s house, here in the Glades.”

Roy is a young man Thea met while attending a group therapy session for Vertigo victims, and the two of them have become fast friends. The archer knows that his mother disapproves of Thea’s fondness for Roy, and he has to admit he was concerned at first as well, but it seems as if Roy has really helped his sister out. Roy may not be the type of person Thea befriends by conventional means, but Felicity is not the kind of friend anybody would have expected Oliver to have either.

“Thea won’t leave him behind,” Oliver mutters. His sister is stubborn and protective, just like him. “Mom, if Diggle calls, tell him that he has my permission to bring Roy here too. Thea probably won’t agree to come unless she knows Roy is safe as well.”

Felicity peers up at him, astonished. “You really don’t care about your secret identity anymore, do you?”

“Not when there are millions of lives at stake. I’ll call Lance, fill him in and ask him to meet us -”

“- at Puckett Street’s abandoned subway station,” Felicity finishes.

“Why there?”

“It’s where Rebecca Merlyn was murdered. It makes sense that’s where Merlyn would want one of the Markov devices to be placed.” Felicity rolls her chair back to show Oliver a map of the Glades, a red pin placed on the Puckett Street location. “I’ve been trying to figure out where the second device might be located, and I think I have some candidates. The schematics of the device say that if the machines are placed in a grid exactly 480 feet apart, that’s the most energy-efficient way of absorbing seismic waves. I’m guessing that it’s the same for when it’s weaponized - it causes the most destruction when they’re 480 feet apart. Merlyn probably took that into account. There are only four possible underground locations within 480 feet of Puckett Street. You and Dig will need to search them, while I work with Detective Lance on dismantling the first device. When you find the second, I’ll start guiding you through taking it apart and meet you there to do the more finicky bits.”

Oliver makes the phone call to Lance and explains the situation. The detective makes it abundantly clear that he doesn’t trust the vigilante a dime, but is willing to help for the sake of saving lives. After he agrees to meet at the Puckett Street location, the archer throws a thumbs up to his girlfriend to indicate that their plan is on track. Felicity blows him a kiss of thanks and begins printing out A3 copies of the Markov device blueprints, gathering a duffel bag full of mechanical tools she and Lance are going to need.

Diggle arrives back with Thea and Walter just in time, as they’re about to leave. Walter hurries to his wife, exhaling in obvious relief that she is safe. He doesn’t seem surprised at all to see Oliver and Felicity in the Foundry, which would make sense, as Oliver suspects that he’s known for a while now that he’s the vigilante. Thea runs straight into Oliver’s arms, much to his surprise, and hugs him fiercely. Oliver is so focused on his little sister that he barely notices Roy entering behind the bodyguard, eyes as round as plates as his gaze traverses the Foundry with awe.

“Mr Diggle explained everything,” Thea says, once she’s pulled back. There are tears in her eyes, but her expression is unfaltering. “Take Malcolm down, Ollie.” She points at Felicity, who blinks in a startled manner. “You too, Felicity! I don’t know what the hell you are, but I know you’re gonna protect my brother because you love him, and that’s good enough for me!”

“Thanks, Thea,” Felicity responds, with a small smile of faint amusement. “Dig, do you need a few minutes before we go?”

“Let me just grab a few spare clips for my gun and a Kevlar vest and I’ll be ready,” the bodyguard says. “I’m guessing we’re not bothering with trying to keep our identities secret from Lance?”

“He’s sworn a truce for today,” Oliver replies, shouldering his quiver and scooping up his bow. “I’m keeping my hood up, but he’s said that he’s not going to arrest or nark on us to the SCPD if he does recognize us. Dismantling the devices is more important.”

“More important than fighting Merlyn?” Diggle asks.

Oliver glances away, biting his lip in frustration. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that he’s champing at the bit when it comes to confronting and taking down Merlyn. After everything the psychopath has done - sabotaging the Gambit to kill his father, stranding Oliver on Lian Yu, forcing him to endure five years of hell, terrorizing his mother, threatening his sister and brother in all but blood, planning to kill millions of people - Oliver is steadfast in his belief that Merlyn does not deserve to live. And he wants to be the one to put the man down.

“I’ll fight Merlyn once the devices have both been deactivated and we know the Glades isn’t going to be destroyed by a man-made natural disaster.”

“You really think that Merlyn’s gonna stick around long enough for you to track him down, once he realizes his plan has failed?”

“Oh, he won’t,” Felicity says, crossing her arms with a deadly-looking smile. The manic energy she’s emitting is perturbing, and Oliver is reminded of a weasel he saw once on the island batting a mouse around between its paws, playing with its food, before killing it to eat it. Merlyn has become Felicity’s prey. “He’ll try and run for sure. But he won’t be able to run forever, my kind hold grudges… and we are _excellent_ trackers.”

A shiver runs down the archer’s spine at the deep echo behind his girlfriend’s voice, but instead of being scared, he’s actually pretty turned on. Something about Felicity being dominant causes heat to pool in his abdomen. He shifts uncomfortably on his feet, feeling his cheeks growing hot; he hopes Felicity doesn’t notice. But of course, her eyes flash over to him and after running up and down his form scrutinizingly, she smirks and wiggles her eyebrows at him. Oliver ducks his head, abashed. Now is not the time.

Moira, Thea, Walter, Tommy, and Roy wish them all good look before they depart. They meet with Lance as planned outside the abandoned subway entrance on Puckett Street, and the detective does a double-take seeing Diggle and Felicity stalking up to him. With Diggle, Lance eyes him knowingly, obviously recognizing him, and there’s a reignited spark of suspicion in his eyes as he looks at Oliver, as if he’s about 90% sure who’s under the hood but can’t be 100% certain since the archer still has his hood up. As Felicity grows closer though, the detective takes a stumbling step back, hit with that sudden instinctual human fear for the first time as his brain tries to comprehend Felicity’s impossible existence.

Despite his agitation, Lance is still capable of his usual snark and barbs, and snaps at Oliver that he’s an idiot for getting an innocent woman involved in this when the vigilante explains that Felicity and Lance will start disassembling the first device, while he and Diggle search for the second.

“Detective, thank you for trying to stick up for me, but I’m his partner, not some naive vulnerable little girl he’s dragged into this,” Felicity cuts in, shooting him a scathing look. “I’ve been working _with_ the vigilante for months now, not _for_ him. This is _my_ plan we’re executing. And I’m perfectly capable of both making decisions for myself and looking after myself.”

“If that’s true, then why do you need me here?” he asks with narrowed eyes.

Felicity smiles sweetly. “To hold my tools for me while I work.”

“I’m here as your _human tool rack?_ ” Lance bristles. “I can’t believe this.”

“And to remind me of the time,” Felicity nods. “I’m terrible at marking the passage of time when I’m concentrating on something.” She pauses and then adds, “If it makes you feel any better, I have a lot more faith in you being my assistant than those two.” She points at Oliver and Dig, who both exchange amused glances. “They’re the pair of irritating ‘are we there yet’ kids on a road trip.”

“It’s true, she finds us very annoying,” Diggle says wryly.

“That I can believe,” the detective grumbles. “Come on, let’s get down there then before I start growing new gray hairs.”

The Markov device is very poorly hidden in the center of the Puckett Street subway station, covered only by a black tarp. Oliver’s inhalation stutters as he anxiously looks over the machine, noting how incredibly complex it appears. Felicity, however, appears determined, and quickly circles the device in a strange sort of dance. The archer can see by the way her eyes dart over every single piece of the device that she’s taking note of everything just in case it’s important, compiling a mental picture of how she thinks the structure of the machine fits together. He’s constantly amazed by how her analytical mind works and watching her observe something so thoroughly just makes his lips tick up into a grin, as it reminds him precisely why he loves her - it’s Felicity just being Felicity.

Lance, however, is not as impressed by her long, silent examination of the device. As Felicity is pulling out her A3 schematic prints and laying them out on the ground, weighing them down with stones, he huffs out, “How long’s it going to take for you to take this apart?”

Scoffing, Felicity mutters, “I’ve literally been in front of it for less than a minute and you’re already asking when I’m going to be done? Humans… you’re all so impatient.”

A beat passes and then the detective asks in a higher voice, sounding slightly panicked, “Why do you say humans like that, like you’re not including yourself?” Felicity shrugs, still focused on examining the machine’s base now, and how it’s drilled into the floor. “You’re human, right?”

“Did the Arrow not mention that?” she murmurs, beginning to poke and prod at wires.

Lance full-on flinches away from her. “WHAT!?”

“The Arrow?” Oliver echoes, choosing to ignore the detective.

She blinks up at him. “It’s a better codename than the Hood or the Vigilante.”

“That’s true. You’re right.”

“I know. Do you like it?”

“I suppose I could grow used to it.”

“What do you mean you’re not human!?” Lance continues frantically, looking terrified. “What the hell are you then!?”

Felicity rolls her eyes and, purposefully turning away from the detective, addresses both Oliver and Diggle. “Stay on comms, you two, and keep me updated. I’ve loaded maps of the underground tunnels that formed the subway and maintenance network onto your cell phones and there should be pins in the locations you need to check, so try and get there as quickly as possible. It’s better if you use the tunnels - the Arrow can’t be seen riding his bike around in broad daylight, after all. Be careful; it wouldn’t surprise me if Merlyn has left traps or guards around the second device considering we’re not meant to know about it.”

The two of them salute her, making her chuckle, and then wheel around to head out. As they do so, walking side by side, they hear Lance carrying on in a whiny tone, “Smoak, don’t ignore me! Explain everything, now!” and Felicity groan, “Sweet goddess of the seas, you don’t need to yell, Detective.”

* * *

It doesn’t take long for Oliver to find the second Markov device - it’s the first location he checks, the second subway station along the Southern line from Puckett Street. There is, however, an issue with securing it. There’s a group of about a dozen hired mercenaries guarding it. Oliver reports the location back to the team and then tells them he’s going to stick around and watch for a bit, to try and figure out their deal. It soon becomes apparent that the thugs have definitely been hired by Merlyn, and are checking in on a radio every half an hour with code words. It’s never the same word, though, which is what’s confusing.

Oliver remains crouched in the shadows for an hour and picks up four of them - two by whoever is manning the radio outside the tunnel, and two by the man on this end answering. _Mandolin, needle, octagon, powerhouse_. Four utterly unrelated words, he muses. Stumped, he grabs a shredded, ruined piece of paperwork he finds screwed up on the floor and half of a pencil, and scribbled down the words so Felicity can hopefully decode it later.

When he and Diggle return to see how their partner is doing with dismantling the first Markov device, they find Felicity maniacally typing on her tablet, which has been plugged into the hardware. Lance is standing beside her holding a giant wad of disconnected wires from the machine in his hand, eyeing them warily as if he’s concerned they’re going to explode. It’s his girlfriend Oliver is the most worried about, though - her hair is frizzy and she’s sweating, muttering nonsense (or code) under her breath as her fingers fly over her tablet screen. Her seafoam eyes are almost black and there’s a distinct deep snarl to her voice as she talks to herself.

“Dare I ask how things are going here?” Oliver asks Lance quietly.

“Don’t,” the detective warns. “She might just bite your head off.” His eyes flicker over to Felicity and he clenches his jaw. “She, uh, realized she needed more than four hands so brought out some… extra limbs, to hold the structure completely still while she dug around for the microchip.”

Oliver’s jaw drops. “You let _Lance_ see your tentacles before me?” he asks Felicity, aghast and slightly offended.

“Not the time, honey,” she growls. “I’m working.”

Lance raises an eyebrow at the use of the term of endearment and, swiveling his gaze back and forth between the blonde and the vigilante, snickers. “Somehow I’m not even surprised.”

“Funny,” Felicity says sourly, tucking her tablet under her arm and grabbing the wires from him, beginning to thread them back in. “Real comedian you are, detective.” Another ten seconds later and she’s stepping back, looking exhausted but relieved. “I think I’m done. This thing should be nothing more than a really ugly modern art piece now. There’s absolutely no way they can re-activate it.”

“Now we have the other one to dismantle,” Lance sighs.

She glares at him. “What, no ‘well done, Felicity, great job, thank you for single-handedly saving the day’?”

“Er, you definitely didn’t manage it single-handedly,” the detective replies, crossing his arms. “I may just be your assistant but I’m a _useful_ one.” He turns to the archer. “Where’d you say the second one is?”

He tells them. “But there are eleven mercenaries guarding it. They’re radioing somebody on the outside every half an hour and exchanging codes, probably so they know that if a check-in doesn’t occur, reinforcements are needed.”

“What kind of code?” Felicity perks up. When Oliver passes the note over to her, she barely looks at it for a second before responding, “Well that’s easy, they’re just saying words that begin with letters following the order of the alphabet. M, N, O, P. Next would be a word starting with Q, them R, then S and so forth.”

The archer suddenly feels stupid that he didn’t realize that before. As the four them begin the short ten-minute walk down the Southern tunnels, Oliver rests his hand tenderly on Felicity’s shoulder. She smiles back at him but her expression falls when she sees his somber face. “You need to save your strength,” he informs her seriously. “We can’t risk you getting hurt. Hang back with Lance while Diggle and I handle the men, okay?”

Felicity looks disappointed. “Why can’t you let me have some of the fun?”

“Because I know you want to eat them and they might be guarding the device, but they’re just thugs for hire,” he reminds her. “Merlyn’s the mastermind.”

“I’m sorry, can we rewind a bit to the point where you said that she wants to _eat them?_ ” Lance says, horrified. “You _EAT PEOPLE?_ ”

“Only bad people,” Felicity sulks. “And only when they’re attacking us.”

“She ate her kidnappers once,” Diggle tells Lance in a monotone voice. “She was still hungry afterward so we had to buy her chow mein. The woman in the restaurant thought she had jelly on her cardigan but it was actually blood. It was a whole thing.”

Lance takes a very large step away from the blonde, his face a little green.

Oliver and Diggle manage to take down the mercenaries reasonably effortlessly, the archer shooting three arrows at once and tranqing them with ketamine, while Diggle shoots out their legs and knocks them out with punches to the head. Felicity grumbles about it being unfair how she doesn’t get any of the action, but hurries up to the second device, beckoning Lance over as she needs the detective to help her.

The disassembling of the second Markov device is quicker than the first, as Felicity and Lance mostly know what they’re doing. Oliver watches on anxiously, switching his bow between his hands behind his back, knowing that he can’t do anything more than stand and offer them protection while they work. The nightmare is almost over - they’ll have stopped the Undertaking from taking place and saved millions of lives. They just have to finish taking apart this device.

 _Quartet_ comes through on the radio as the next codeword, and Diggle replies with _Rascal_. Half an hour passes and the Markov device is slowly deconstructed before their eyes. The next codeword arrives, being _Starfish_. Diggle responds with _Tetris_ , but the man on the other end of the line must somehow figure out something is wrong, because about five minutes before Felicity and the detective finish up, a swarm of men in black with guns appears.

Throwing themselves into fighting them off, the archer desperately attempts to keep them away from his girlfriend working on the device, knowing that she’s busy concentrating right now; while Felicity wouldn’t really be hurt if somebody shot or hit her, because of her Leviathan nature, she would be distracted. That could have lethal consequences seeing as she’s forearms-deep in an earthquake machine.

Despite Oliver and Diggle’s best efforts, one man slips through a gap between them and heads straight for Felicity. He viciously grabs her hair and is about to tear her away from the machine when as quick as a flash, the blonde is whipping around to face him, not an ounce of fear on her face, and instead looking annoyed beyond belief.

All of them freeze in petrified shock as her entire jaw _unhinges and dislocates_ , and five giant eight-foot long green tentacles erupt from her mouth, wrapping around the man. The limbs squeeze the life out of him until the guy is choking on his terrified screams and then - just as quickly as they appeared, the tentacles retract into Felicity’s throat, disappearing into her tiny unassuming blonde body, _sucking the man down with them_.

Oliver, Diggle, and Lance stare at her, too disturbed and traumatized to speak.

Felicity cracks her jaw now it’s no longer dislocated and stretches her arms above her head, wrinkling her nose in distaste in what the archer would usually find to be an adorable manner. She rubs a hand over her stomach and complains, “Great, now I’m going to need some antacids later.” Glancing up at them, she shoots them apologetic puppy dog eyes. “Sorry about that. I haven’t eaten in twelve hours and I’m _starving_. Saving the city is hungry work.”

There’s no other way for Oliver to react other than to burst into hysterical laughter, run up to her and lift her into the air, twirling her around. Felicity laughs with him, genuine joy on her face and relief in her eyes that he hasn’t rejected her, which to Oliver is an absolutely impossible thing to do, because he loves her with his entire heart to the stars and back. Trapping her in a hug when he brings her back down to the ground, Oliver dots kisses all over her face and just _breathes_. 

Eventually, though, Felicity has to wiggle out of his grasp to finish the last parts of dismantling the device, but once all that is done, she throws herself back at him. The kiss she plants on his lips is bruising and desperate, and her fingers dip beneath his hood to cup his cheeks.

Leaning her forehead against his when they break apart, she whispers, “We did it.”

They did. The two Markov devices have been taken apart and the Undertaking has been foiled. Malcolm’s plan has failed. “No, _you_ did it,” he corrects. The detective clears his throat behind him. The archer rolls his eyes. “Fine, you and Lance did it.”

“I have a feeling it's not over yet,” Diggle says. “We’ve still got to track down Merlyn and get him taken into custody. Not the SCPD’s - either ARGUS’ or the FBI’s.”

“Way to downplay our victory, Dig,” Felicity puffs, still cuddling Oliver, and refusing to let him go. “I already sent all of the evidence we’ve gathered against Merlyn and everything that proves that Moira was working with him under duress to the FBI. I did it as I was printing the blueprints earlier.” She sighs. “But you’re right, we do still have to confront Merlyn. Which should be easy, because I can just ping his cell phone.”

“Your girl’s a genius, you know that?” Lance says, shaking his head. He runs his fingers through his thin hair, also looking relieved that this mess is finally - well, partially - over.

“Absolutely. Now let’s go get Merlyn.”

* * *

They might have managed to shut down the two Markov devices, but it turns out Merlyn has a contingency in place - he’s rigged a gas pipeline beneath Rebecca Merlyn’s old medical clinic that he shut down recently to explode. They’ve tracked Merlyn using his cell phone; Oliver and Felicity are approaching Merlyn Manor on the archer’s Ducati when the blonde gets the news through Diggle on comms. Lance has left to rush to the scene, as he needs to help coordinate rescue efforts and he’s concerned about Laurel, since CNRI is only a block away and could have been caught in the explosion. They reckon there are approximately eighteen casualties.

It’s eighteen too many, in Oliver’s opinion. Judging by Felicity’s reaction, vibrating with fury, it’s eighteen too many for her, as well.

When they arrive at the manor, Oliver skids the bike to a halt, filled with dread and feeling like he’s just walked directly into some sort of ambush. There are numerous FBI vans parked on the driveway with a fully geared up SWAT team out front. The FBI definitely got Felicity’s tip-off then. It appears they’ve already tried to infiltrate the building and failed to arrest Merlyn, as two of the men are down on the ground groaning in pain as medics try and treat the arrows sticking out of their shoulders and legs.

The non-reaction from the other SWAT team members and FBI agents standing around is what unsettles him, because they simply turn to stare, with impassive expressions or slight frowns. He’s dressed as the Starling City vigilante and they’re barely batting an eyelid at the sight of him.

Felicity vaults off the Ducati. Patting his arm, she orders, “Stay here,” and then, to Oliver’s disbelief, begins confidently walking over to the FBI agent who appears to be in charge.

After having a somewhat heated discussion with the man for a couple of minutes, she wheels back around and cheerfully skips back toward the archer, grinning.

Dropping a kiss on his lips, she tells him, “They’re okay with us going in and taking Merlyn down so they can safely take him into custody. No serious maiming or injuries, and no killing him, but we can rough him up a bit.”

“You… you got the FBI to agree to that?”

Shrugging, she hops back onto the bike behind him, winding her arms around his waist. Oliver kicks off and they continue down the drive, zooming past the crowd of FBI agents and around to the back of the property. “They want Merlyn, but it’s too risky for them to confront him. I told them that only an archer can hope to fight another archer, and offered for us to subdue him. They’re willing to give us immunity for now if they make the arrest.”

So Oliver can’t kill the man. Honestly… having that sort of limit that forces the archer to restrain himself is probably a good thing. He can’t possibly imagine having to return to the Foundry and look his mother, sister and childhood friend in the eye and confess that he murdered Tommy’s father. As much as he is tempted to do so, because of that dark writhing part of him buried at the back of his mind that itching for him to avenge his father and all those that Merlyn has killed and threatened to kill over the past half a decade, Oliver knows that killing him in return is not true justice.

He and Felicity walk into the mansion through the back entrance, which has had the door rammed down by the FBI, side by side as partners. The archer keeps an arrow nocked to his bow cautiously and can see that Felicity has curled her hands into fists, her eyes glowing with otherworldly power. It’s eerily quiet inside the enormous house, the only sounds being their footsteps on the wooden planks and their harsh breathing.

“Oliver.”

He whips around faster than a lightning bolt, bow raised and ready to fire in a split second. Merlyn stands before them, in full Dark Archer grab with his bow in hand but hood down. Oliver can’t help but stumble back a step, bumping into Felicity. Coming face to face with the psychopath who beat the hell out of him at Christmas, has threatened his family for years, _killed his father_ , stranded him on Lian Yu and planned to mercilessly kill millions of innocent civilians… he would be an idiot to _not_ admit he’s slightly scared.

“Your mother insisted that it wasn’t you under the hood, you know,” Merlyn continues, unfazed by having an arrow pointed at him. “Of course, the circumstantial evidence damned you. I suspected you were the vigilante after our little scuffle at Christmas, but I wasn’t certain until you confronted Moira at QC and left her entirely unharmed. Here we are, at an impasse.”

“Your Undertaking is over, Malcolm,” he growls. “The Markov devices have been deactivated.”

“Yet you didn’t stop the gas explosion I set up,” the maniac replies, sounding remarkably calm. “I didn’t tell your mother or Tommy about it, that’s why. You know, I’m going to enjoy killing you and then tearing them apart limb by limb, making them suffer for being weak, traitorous fools.”

“You are not going to touch a hair on _any_ of their heads.” Radiating courage, Felicity actually takes a step toward Merlyn, tensing her shoulders and bunching her muscles in preparation to leap into a battle. Her voice is ferocious, her eyes ablaze with rage. Her shadows twist and coil on the floor, growing and growing and _growing_ in size until they take up the entire room, turning the air frigid, so their breaths start to show in the cold.

Merlyn eyes her carefully, suddenly looking a bit more timid. “I see you brought your girlfriend along. Or should I use the more accurate term - pet monster.”

“The only monster here is you,” Oliver fires back, half-shielding Felicity with his body. “Surrender now into the FBI’s custody, Malcolm. We don’t have to fight. It’s two against one, you know you can’t win this.”

“I don’t need to win,” Merlyn replies simply. “I just need you to die.”

He nocks, draws, and fires a razor-tipped arrow at Oliver’s head in a heartbeat. The archer reacts instantly, darting out the way - it should just graze his shoulder, but Felicity manages to catch it with her superior reflexes. She releases a spine-tingling snarl and, snapping the arrow in half with her bare hand, launches herself at Merlyn.

The man scrambles to escape her, shooting arrow after arrow in a panicked frenzy. He _is_ scared of her. Oliver thinks this might be the most terrified Merlyn has ever been; he was putting on a brave face earlier, but now his fear is shining through. Felicity evades the arrows or knocks them astray with her arms, unbothered. 

Merlyn runs, sprinting up the grand staircase. Both Oliver and Felicity give chase, the archer trying to aim and shoot at the man as Felicity bounds up the steps agilely after him. Just as Merlyn reaches the top of the stairs, he wheels around, pointing at arrow at Felicity. Oliver’s eyes widen as he realizes that its an incendiary one. Fire - Felicity’s one and possibly only weakness. He yells out a warning to his girlfriend, but it’s too late.

The arrow strikes her side and erupts into flames. His girlfriend contorts in agony and shrieks, making the entire building shake with the power behind her true voice. Merlyn attempts to make a getaway but Felicity thrusts her hand out, venomous barbs flying from her fingertips. One nicks the back of Merlyn’s leg, making him yowl, but despite his small wound, he slips away. Felicity cries out and slides down two steps, clutching her injured side. 

Oliver staggers up to her, ready to throw his bow aside as he’s overwhelmed with concern and alarm. His heart is thudding in his chest so fast that he’s almost breathless, head spinning. But when he kneels down next to Felicity, cupping her cheek, she peers up at him with pain-filled eyes and an utterly furious expression. Her clothes are burned away and her skin is red and inflamed where the arrow struck her, but she’s damaged from the fire only - the arrow hasn’t pierced her at all.

“I’m fine,” she gasps. “Go after him!”

“Felicity -”

“The spike only hit the top layer of his skin, so my venom won’t down him, but it will make it hard for him to run. You might not get another chance to take him down! Oliver, _go!_ ”

He hesitates, but obeys her. Because Felicity is not only the love of his life, but she is almost always right, and if she is telling him to go after Merlyn because he might not get another opportunity in the future, then he needs to pursue the man. Does Oliver feel like a terrible, horrible boyfriend leaving her behind? Yes. Immensely. He feels like his heart is being torn out because he desperately wants to stay behind and help her; he rarely sees Felicity hurt and in pain and all he wants to do is sweep her up into a hug and make everything better for her.

Oliver shakes his head, gritting his teeth as he continues up the stairs, taking them three at a time, as he sprints after Merlyn. He has to focus on the fight, not Felicity. Felicity would want him to concentrate on keeping himself safe enough to incapacitate Merlyn, not worry about her.

He finds Merlyn trying to escape off of Tommy’s bedroom balcony. The fight that ensues is brutal. The two men cast aside their bows to exchange physical blows, raining down punches and hits, tackling each other to the floor ferociously. They brawl like beasts, scratching to draw blood and kicking each other’s legs out from beneath them. Both of them have their advantages; Oliver is younger and therefore quicker and lither than Merlyn, while the older man is stronger and more experienced in combat.

Eventually, Merlyn finds an opening, a vulnerability in Oliver’s stance, and it’s because he’s being stupid, as the archer is distracted by what he thinks is Felicity shouting his name. Merlyn grabs him by the throat and pins him up against the wall, squeezing. Oliver’s vision begins to blur around the edges, black creeping in as his lungs struggle for oxygen. He claws at Merlyn’s arms and kicks at the man’s legs, frantically trying to get free, but Merlyn is leaning his entire weight onto Oliver’s body in an effort to crush his windpipe.

Just as Oliver thinks it might be all over, unconsciousness beginning to take hold of him, an agonized scream is wrenched from Merlyn’s chest and the man stumbles back, releasing Oliver. The archer gulps down air, collapsing against the wall in astonishment. Felicity is standing in the doorway, _floating in mid-air_ and alight with a mysterious dark green energy, her eyes glowing the same color.

A tentacle emerging from her back has ripped Merlyn’s right leg off from the knee, dismembering him. Oliver huddles in the corner, shaking all over as he watches the energy consume his girlfriend for a moment, a translucent illusion of a huge, lumbering, dragon-like sea beast appearing over the top of her human form.

Her true form. It’s… _magnificent_.

“In the name of the great serpents of the oceans, the eternal and almighty Leviathan of the Below, we condemn you, Malcolm Merlyn,” a deep, rumbling voice that is _not Felicity’s_ emerges from her mouth, echoing like the roar of a tempest’s waves and making the entire manor trembling at its foundations. “Know that even in death, you will not find peace, and will instead be haunted by the destruction you wrought for eons, as the pain you wreaked upon others shall be done unto you, a thousand times over so you may know the horror and havoc you have caused.”

By now, Malcolm is curled up and cowering on the floor, openly weeping. Oliver is honestly numb from shock, his sore throat feeling like it’s closed up as he stares at the floor, breathing hitching. Something akin from a sob works its way out of his mouth, and that’s when Felicity turns her full attention onto him. The energy glow dims, the illusion fades, and drops down to the floor - she now appears entirely human again.

Bending down slowly, she crouches next to Merlyn’s head and hisses, “The only person who gets to choke my boyfriend out is _me_.” Then Felicity straightens, steps directly over his shivering form, and stalks towards Oliver, holding her arms out for him.

An innuendo. Her moment of triumph, her last sentence to Merlyn to asset her victory over him… and she chose to do it with an innuendo. Felicity sweeps him into a hug, clinging to him like he’s the only anchor keeping her weighted down on this earth, and Oliver embraces her back just as tightly, burying his nose in her hair and breathing in her scent. It’s over. It’s finally over.

The FBI enter the room, arrest Merlyn, and then carry him out on a stretcher. They don’t ask where his leg is which is a good thing because Oliver is pretty certain Felicity might have eaten it when he wasn’t looking. The agent in charge who Felicity spoke to earlier salutes them both before they make their exit - giving the vigilante and blonde the chance to leave without confrontation.

Merlyn is in law enforcement custody and the Undertaking has been prevented.

The archer and Leviathan, both exhausted but in high spirits, head home together, hand in hand.

* * *

Four months later, they are still reeling in the aftermath of Merlyn’s arrest and how they stopped the Undertaking from occurring.

Moira cooperated with the police and FBI and they have agreed that she was a victim in the situation, performing under duress. She’s now working alongside Walter at QC to aid in merging the company with Merlyn Global, which will soon be rebranded as Queen Incorporated come fall. She, Thea, Walter, and Tommy are all living together at the Queen mansion, as Tommy sold Merlyn Manor in order to raise money to go towards helping the victims of the Rebecca Merlyn Medical Clinic gas pipeline explosion.

Tommy was concerned he would be ostracised from society after the media got word of what his dad did and was planning to do, but instead, he was harked as a hero who fought against the tyranny of his father and is now doing good in the world. It helps that he’s reconstructing the medical center and making it a free service to everybody in the glades.

Thea has picked up her grades thanks to tutoring from Felicity - she absolutely adores the Leviathan and thinks she’s the most awesome person on the planet, which Oliver agrees with - and is in a happy relationship with Roy Harper, who is now the team’s informant in the Glades.

Lance has been promoted from detective to sergeant, as his involvement in dismantling the Markov devices came to light in an FBI report, and has shut down the anti-vigilante taskforce, becoming a sort of honorary member of Team Arrow.

Laurel was injured in the explosion but not badly, and while she and Tommy are on a relationship break, Oliver thinks the two of them will probably find their way back to each other soon.

Diggle is no longer Oliver’s bodyguard, and has been promoted by Walter to Head of QC Security, as he was being wasted in his position protecting the archer before - he didn’t really need the personal protection, after all. He’s also rekindling an old relationship with Lyla, his ex-wife, and the ARGUS agent he contacted about Felicity all those months ago. He is, in his own words, happy. On a break from Team Arrow work currently, but then again, they’re all sort of on a break really.

Oliver has stopped targeting criminals solely from the List his father gave him and has instead started fighting general crime as well, combating gang violence and the mobs thriving within the city as well as the occasional ‘villain of the week’, as Felicity has dubbed them. But with crime rates at a new low, he’s able to take time off to spend with his family and girlfriend.

Oliver and Felicity are actually on vacation, right now. Not the Maldives, or Aruba, or Bali, as Thea slyly suggested when she heard they wanted to go abroad, but probably the one place in the entire world that nobody would _ever_ expect them to be: Lian Yu. Why? Because it’s an island that Oliver knows from top to bottom and is decently easy to survive on with the right supplies - and it’s out in the middle of nowhere, which makes it perfect for Felicity’s favorite activity: Swimming. (Not sex. Although that is probably her second favorite. She and Oliver have _fantastic_ sex. No tentacles have been involved though. Yet.)

Lian Yu is the perfect vacation island for Felicity to do what Felicity does best: be herself. And not just be herself, but be completely herself, tentacles and all. The deep waters off the coast of the island are perfect for her to assume her natural form, which Oliver personally thinks is majestic, rather than horrifying and scary. Seeing his girlfriend so content, wild and free in the water where she truly belongs, is everything Oliver has ever wanted. Her peals of laughter when they chase each other playfully on the island’s plains make his heart sing, and the way she curls up around him at night on their nest of blankets on the floor of the plane wreck they’ve decided to call home while they are here, make him feel safe and loved, for the first time in half a decade.

On their last day on the island, as they’re taking a romantic stroll along the rocky beach, remarkably similar to their first date… Oliver drops down to one knee and pulls a ring box out of his pocket.

Felicity nearly faints and starts crying. Panicking, thinking he’s upset her by proposing, the archer tries to rush back to his feet, but the blonde just shoves him back down to his knees and falls to hers in front of him, kissing him so passionately that Oliver feels like his body is being filled with light.

Needless to say, she says yes. The engagement ring is platinum with a central emerald flanked by three small diamonds on each side. It fits on Felicity’s finger perfectly. Oliver picks her up so her legs are wrapped around his waist and spins her. When he stops, he spreads his hands so they span her back and they look out over the calm sea together.

“I love you,” he murmurs, beaming at her.

“I love you,” she whispers, kissing him repeatedly as the freezing ocean laps at Oliver’s ankles. “And I will for the rest of eternity.”

Her blonde hair flies free in the wind behind her, and the sun shining down on them makes it shimmer gold, so she looks like a goddess. Flecks of silver in her stunning blue eyes shine as well. She’s the most wondrous, ethereal being on the surface of the earth, and Oliver considers himself incredibly lucky to be marrying her in the future. 

“Felicity?”

“Yes?”

“You are the very best part of me. You look human but you aren’t, but you are the best person I know. And I love you for it. You know that, right?”

He accepts and adores every single part of her. He loves the fact that despite not being human, she embodies every one of humanity’s best traits: empathy, passion, loyalty, generosity, resilience, humility, and so many more. He needs her to understand that.

Felicity is Leviathan and she is unique and she is _good_. 

She smiles and strokes her thumb lightly over his cheek, tilting their foreheads together. “I know.”

Above and beyond everything else, she is so loved.

* * *

_FIN_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so, SO much if you read this until the very end, i know it was a fic that was a bit out there but i immensely enjoyed writing it and i hope you enjoyed reading it!!
> 
> i would really appreciate hearing your final thoughts on your fic in the comments xx and also really appreciate your kudos! you guys are the best, thank you for everything
> 
> twitter: @lexiblackbriar  
> tumblr: @alexiablackbriar13

**Author's Note:**

>  **next time:** felicity is kidnapped, the altered events of 1x14 and 1x15 occur, olicity take romantic steps towards each other and the undertaking closes in
> 
> if you enjoyed, i would really appreciate you leaving kudos and a comment! thank you xx


End file.
